Kansas teacher, 55, is sentenced to probation after she was caught on video KICKING a five-year-old student because she was 'hiding' behind a bookshelf
A former Kansas teacher who was caught on surveillance video kicking a five-year-old kindergarten student in the school library has been sentenced to a year of probation.
Crystal Smith, 55, was initially handed a 30-day jail term, but a jury granted her probation instead. She also was ordered to attend anger management classes after pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery at a video hearing last Thursday in Johnson County District Court, online court records show.
A security camera at the Bluejacket-Flint Elementary School in Shawnee, Kansas, captured footage of the February 2019 incident, which unfolded after the rest of the class had left the library.
The girl had crawled into a bookshelf opening. Smith yanked her out, then kicked the girl as she lay huddled on the floor.
The girl eventually stood up and walked out of the library behind Smith. The student's mother was not informed of what happened and did not learn of the incident until the girl told her when she was picked up from school, according to a federal civil lawsuit filed against the school.
The incident took place in the library at Bluejacket-Flint Elementary School in Shawnee, Kansas, in February 2019
Security video showed Smith (left) kicking the girl hiding in a bookshelf (pictured)
Smith also grabbed the child before leading the five-year-old out of the library
When the mother asked the child how her day was, the girl responded, 'I don't like my teacher. She's really mean. She hit me on my arm.'
Her mother then noticed a large red mark on the child's arm.
The mother then went to the school to find out what had occurred.
When the mother confronted the teacher, Smith denied harming the girl and told her the girl was to blame for the red marks on her body. The mother demanded school officials to investigate and review any video security footage.
In the recording, the little girl refuses to get in the line with her peers and crawls into the bookshelf.
After the class leaves the library, Smith returns and finds the girl in the bookshelf. The teacher then grabs the child by the arm, drags her to the ground, and gives her rough kick in the back as she lays sprawled on the ground.
'She is really young so it's pretty devastating to her,' Dan Zmijewski, the family's attorney, said of the then-kindergarten student.
The student crawled into the bookshelf after refusing to get in the line with her peers
Smith later lied to the girl's mother, saying she did not harm her daughter
The five-year-old girl came home with red marks on her arm (pictured) and told her mother her teacher had hit her
Not only is it traumatic because it happened, but the school didn't do anything about it until her mother came to school to find out what happened, he said.
So not only is the girl having to deal with what happened to her, but she also has to deal with nobody doing anything about it and trying to suggest it didn't even happen.
'At first she was completely, totally terrified of schools and libraries because it happened in the library ... that is unfortunately one of the safest places you think you can go as a child,' he said. 'It required her to get therapy as a result of all this.'
Smith, who was a first-year teacher,in the district, was put on leave pending the end of an investigation and was officially fired a month after the incident.
The girl's mother filed a federal lawsuit against Smith and the school district, claiming civil rights violations and negligence. The lawsuit is still making its way through the courts.
