A Cuban woman who worked as a teacher's assistant was arrested this Monday after she was recorded hitting a six-year-old autistic boy at a daycare in Miami.
Miami police reported that before the woman - 52 years old and identified as Marlene Carballo - was handcuffed, she had already been fired from her job at the Interamerican Learning Center, located at 1521 NW 28th St., in the Allapattah neighborhood.
Carballo, a resident of Little Havana, is facing a charge of child abuse, according to Captain Freddy Cruz of the Miami police department, as revealed to Telemundo 51.
According to the police, the surveillance video - recorded shortly before 1 p.m. on Monday - shows Carballo trying to force the child to sit in a chair "by pushing him by the shoulders several times and giving him a tap on the ear."
An arrest report states that the video shows Carballo pulling the child by the arm, forcing him to sit on the floor “while she sits in a chair behind and wraps her legs around him so he cannot move.”
"While he immobilized him with his legs, Carballo struck the victim three times with his right hand and once with his left hand. He then grabbed the victim's wrist and forced him to hit himself approximately ten times," Local 10 specified.
The police said that Carballo then got up, pulled the child, pushed him "against a cabinet," and hit him again. At that moment, the child's therapist saw what was happening and intervened.
The therapist entered the daycare director's office holding the child and tearfully told her that "she had to get rid of that teacher," and when asked what had happened, she indicated to "look at the camera."
After doing so, the daycare director called Carballo to her office and fired her.
When arrested, the Cuban claimed that she was only "holding" the minor so that he wouldn't hit her.
When the police presented the video evidence to her, she continued to deny having hit him. However, the authorities clarified that the arrested individual finally admitted to having committed the act.
She was taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center (TGK) and has already been released after paying a $3,000 bond.
"One of our newly hired employees was observed physically abusing a child in our elementary school. The act was witnessed by several therapists who were working in the classroom at the time and reported it to the principal," wrote the school administration.
The daycare said that the minor is physically well, has no injuries, and has already returned to the center, where the arrested Cuban only worked for nine days.
Unfortunately, this is not the first incident of its kind involving a Cuban in recent weeks.
At the end of September, the Cuban Deysi Acosta, 54 years old, was arrested accused of physically abusing an 11-month-old baby, in this case at a daycare center she owned in the city of Naples, in Collier County.
The arrest of Acosta took place after the victim's mother provided the county Sheriff's Office with images of the physical abuse that she received from another family whose daughter also attends that daycare and recorded what happened on an iPad.
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