When Texas police were called to a call about a 3-month-old baby boy “showing unusual lethargy,” they allegedly found that the baby’s day care teacher was to blame and that she had been caught on video treating the baby like a “rag doll.”
This week, 24-year-old Ignite Learning Academy employee Jasmine Collum was arrested and charged with a felony for behavior at work. She was booked into jail on Tuesday evening.
Temple Police say their investigation, which also involved Child Protective Services, began late at night on Oct. 16, hours after the victim was taken to Baylor Scott and White McLane Children’s Specialty Clinic because she was “apparently very tired.”
“When officers got there, they found out the child had been dropped off at Ignite Learning Academy in Temple, TX for daycare at 8 a.m. that morning,” police said. “Around 4 p.m., the child started to act very sleepy for no reason.” EMS was called, and it was decided that the child should be taken to the hospital.
At first, police didn’t say how they knew Collum was a suspect, but the details of the complaint in the third-degree felony case are shocking.
KCEN, a local NBC affiliate, reported that surveillance video from inside the day care showed Collum “swinging and bouncing” the victim “aggressively,” making the baby “flop around like they were a rag doll.” The abuse continued while the victim was in a bouncer, which caused a brain injury.
According to court documents, Collum shook the bouncer with her feet and rocked it back and forth until the victim fell over. She then picked him up “by his head” and kept going, with the baby being identified as a boy by CBS affiliate KWTX.
The report said that Collum “roughly” hit the baby in the back before putting him back in the bouncer.
She then allegedly bounced the baby with her foot until he looked “limp and unresponsive,” and then she told her boss about his condition.
In Texas, someone is guilty of a third-degree felony injury to a child if they do it “intentionally or knowingly.”
looked at records from the Bell County Jail and found that Collum is still in jail as of Friday on a $125,000 bond.
