GhLinks Media
Two preschool teachers Zeina Alostwani & Soriana Briceno have been arrested for cruelty to children after parents watched them abuse two and three-year-old students on a live video stream from the classroom.
The incident happened at Parker-Chase Preschool’s Pre-Primary B classroom last week, according to school leaders.
Authorities shared surveillance video that they said is being used as evidence in the case.
The video from inside the classroom shows students, ages two and three, sitting on a rug.
First teacher, Soriana Briceno, approaches one of the students and kneels.
She puts her face close to the child as the second teacher walks up behind the children.
Zeina Alostwani, the second teacher steps on the child’s hand which was behind the child, palm down on the floor, and keeps her foot pressed on the child’s hand.
Then that teacher steps to the next child and kicks the child in the back using her knee and shin.
The teacher who is at eye-level with the child points her index finger in their face and then pushes the child’s forehead, causing their head to bobble, the video shows.
The teacher, still kneeling, turns away from the children and walks on her knees out of camera range.
Parents are calling on police and the state to investigate the entire school, worried that more preschoolers may have been abused.
It all came to light on Thursday, June 2.
Gloria Barghi, the mother of one of the preschoolers in that classroom, said she picked up her phone to check on her son, on the live feed from the classroom.
“I just told my husband, I said, ‘I’ve got a weird feeling I’ve got to check on our son,'” Barghi said, “call it mother’s intuition, I said, ‘I just want to see if he’s okay.’ So I picked up the phone, I pulled up the app…. I picked it up right when the lead teacher was assaulting the first victim.”
Barghi and her husband, Brant Duncan, immediately raced to the preschool, checked on their son, demanded to see the entire video of what they’d just seen live, and they saw the entire sequence.
“It it was intentional. It was thought out. It was malicious. These are defenseless little kids,” Barghi said, describing what she saw on the video.
