A trainer at a Queens daycare for autistic toddlers bruised a 3-year-old’s arm after which rubbed hand sanitizer in his mouth — and the varsity tried to cowl all of it up, in line with a brand new lawsuit and police information.
Trainer Heidi Velasco Munoz pleaded responsible to endangering the welfare of a kid and informed police when she was arrested after the 2023 incident that “I don’t have an explanation” for why she put hand sanitizer into the non-verbal baby’s mouth.
The lawsuit claims the daycare, Comfortable Dragon Youngsters Studying Middle in Corona, “never reported the abuse” to the mother and father, and didn’t fireplace Munoz instantly, regardless of it being captured on the varsity’s video surveillance.
“I trusted them,” mother Sabrina Gentile informed The Publish. “They failed me and my family.”
“Even though this happened in 2023 it still causes pain to all of us,” Gentile mentioned.
“While justice has been done on the criminal side, we now look for justice on the civil side,” mentioned the household’s attorneys, Sanford Rubenstein and Mark Shirian.
After returning dwelling from daycare in March 2023, the boy’s mother was alarmed to see his arm coated in bruises.
“When I took his coat off and saw those bruises on his arms, I automatically called the daycare,” Gentile mentioned.
However the daycare stonewalled her and the boy’s father once they got here within the subsequent day, and even issued a false incident report claiming their non-verbal son bit himself, signed by the trainer and the daycare’s director.
“I’m able to tell the difference between a bite mark and a bruise,” Gentille mentioned, who’s spent over a decade working as an EMS first-responder. “It looked like fingerprints.”
Rubenstein added, “That was obviously an attempt at a cover-up. Obviously, in this case, the cover-up failed.”
The daycare even refused to share surveillance footage depicting the disturbing incident for hours when father German Vasquez returned the following day, so he referred to as the police.
“The school didn’t want to show us nothing until the police actually arrived on the scene,” Vasquez informed The Publish.
Police reviews describe the video as displaying Munoz “aggressively pinning” the crying, non-verbal baby between her legs, eradicating a toy from his mouth, “intentionally flicking” his arm and “forcibly inserting an unknown substance into [his] mouth.”
“I was in shock,” Vasquez mentioned. “I was seeing the lady rubbing stuff in my son’s mouth.”
“They were not protecting my son,” he added.
Gentile rushed her boy to the hospital, considering his trainer had been forcibly medicating him. Toxicology assessments got here up unfavorable.
Munoz readily admitted to police after her arrest a month later that she’d caught hand sanitizer within the boy’s mouth, police reviews state.
“It was not appropriate to restrain him that way,” she mentioned, in line with police information of physique digital camera footage, “and I felt bad when I did it.”
When an officer requested her about placing hand sanitizer within the boy’s mouth, she replied: “Yes. I don’t have an explanation for that.”
“Despite the egregious nature of Munoz’s conduct, Happy Dragon failed to immediately terminate Munoz and failed to implement any safeguards to prevent further abuse,” the swimsuit states.
An administrator at Comfortable Dragon mentioned that they weren’t conscious of the incident, and The Publish was unable to contact Munoz.
A spokesperson from the Queens District Legal professional mentioned they didn’t have any details about Munoz or her case, however in line with information obtained by way of FOIL, Munoz pleaded responsible to endangering the welfare of a kid in November 2023 and was sentenced to fifteen days of group service.
Practically two years later, the boy is doing higher and loves his new faculty. However his mother and pop can inform he will get nervous in the event that they drive towards his previous daycare.
“I think my son remembers clearly,” Vasquez mentioned, “because as I’m driving over the highway, he gets uncomfortable, he starts to make noise.”
“To this day, I don’t really drive that direction,” Gentile mentioned.
