A toddler-tossing teacher was terminated after throwing a 2-year-old preschooler against a wall “like a piece of luggage,” Connecticut authorities said Tuesday.
Kristie Kovarcik, 47, was charged with second-degree reckless endangerment and risk of injury to a minor in the Jan. 12 incident. She was also fired by Town & Country Early Learning Center in Middletown, Conn., from the job she had held since 2019.
It was around 9:45 a.m. when the daycare center’s director, hearing an “elevated voice” coming from the room about 30 feet from her office, booted up her security camera to see the source of the commotion. It revealed that some of the children appeared to be wrestling, which is forbidden, and Kovarcik was not trying to stop them, according to an arrest warrant obtained by Connecticut Insider.
Next, the director saw Kovarcik hoist the child by the back of the shirt and fling them to the side, and heard a “loud thud” as the kid flew six feet and hit the wall. The director told police she rushed in, scooped up the crying toddler and took her back to the office, then called the 2-year-old child’s guardian and notified the Department of Children and Families (DCF).
After seeing the footage, the victim’s guardian said it looked as if Kovarcik had launched the child “through the air like a piece of luggage,” the arrest warrant said.
The child ended up with a contusion or bruise above the right eye.
Kovarcik turned herself in on Feb. 26 and is due in court on April 2, according to local NBC affiliate WVIT. She admitted to police she’d “kind of lost [her] cool” on a “very chaotic” day, had not meant to hurt the child and expressed remorse.
But review of other footage indicated that this incident might not be isolated. Police found instances of Kovarcik pushing down on a child’s chest to try to make them lie down during naptime, kick another toddler who was on the ground, and yank another one out of a chair by the shirt and drop them to the floor, the warrant said. A co-worker may also be implicated in other incidents.
“At this time, the retrieved footage is currently being reviewed to identify any other incident and/or victims,” the warrant stated, according to Connecticut Insider. “A log of occurrences will be drafted and submitted in the future for judicial review.”
Town & Country said such behavior was not the norm.
“Our safety and training protocols are amongst the strictest in our industry and we treat any such incident with the utmost seriousness,” the center told WVIT.
All eyes are on the facility now.
The Office of Early Childhood said it “became aware of this unfortunate incident and conducted a joint investigation with DCF,” the state agency that licenses child care facilities told WVIT. “The OEC takes these situations very seriously and we take every measure needed to ensure the health and safety of children.”
