A San Angelo family has filed an amended petition in a negligence lawsuit against Trinity Lutheran School, alleging their daughter was subjected to “continuous yelling, screaming, ridiculing, belittling, shoving, pushing, yanking, dragging, and hitting.”
The reference is to an incident the lawsuit said happened on March 24, 2021. The original lawsuit was filed Jan. 11, 2023.
Neither the school nor its attorney returned phone calls or emails requesting comment on the new filing.
In the second amended petition, filed June 19 in the 391st District Court, parents Patrick and Mellissa Killingsworth allege their child’s teacher had a “mental and emotional breakdown,” and the school ignored four months of warning signs that it was coming.
The lawsuit alleges the teacher, who is not named in the documents, was caught on camera subjecting the child to “hours of inappropriate discipline” that left “a lifelong impact on a little girl they were supposed to keep safe.”
The lawsuit also contains purported text message exchanges between the teacher and the school director in which the teacher said she cannot come to work because of panic attacks.
The responding person said in the text messages the school cannot cover for her because another teacher was out with COVID-19.
“Please come in. Please!!” the director is purported to say in the messages.
The lawsuit contends administrators had the ability to watch live surveillance video in the school, but the director did not do so on the morning of the alleged event.
The lawsuit alleges the school has a history of failing to keep children safe, including two previous incidents in which “two children were inappropriately touched.”
The Killingsworths want more than $1 million in damages, according to the lawsuit.
This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: San Angelo parents allege negilgence in lawsuit against school
Reporting by Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News / San Angelo Standard-Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News | USA TODAY Network
