A 6-year-old Florida schoolgirl was handcuffed and arrested after she kicked a school staff member and this has led to an outrage.The child, named Kaia, who suffers from sleep apnea, was arrested, cuffed and fingerprinted after she threw a kicking tantrum in her Orlando elementary school class. She was then charged with battery.
“She was charged with battery!” an angry Meralyn Kirkland, the child’s grandmother, told WFLA-TV.
Kirkland said her grandchild suffers from sleep apnea, a condition she is working on managing through medication, and was acting out from sleep deprivation. She said her granddaughter should never have been hauled off from her school in handcuffs.
The girl’s grandmother said she was horrified to learn Kaia was arrested on Thursday, September 19, after she kicked a staff member at the Lucious and Emma Nixon Elementary charter school.
After her arrest, Kaia was placed in handcuffs and driven 8 miles to Orlando’s Juvenile Detention Center, where she was fingerprinted and had her mug shot taken, the report said.
Kirkland said she received a call from someone at the elementary school informing her the child was in police custody.
“‘What do you mean she was arrested?’ ” Kirkland remembered saying during the unbelievable call.
“He said, ‘There was an incident and she kicked somebody and she is being charged and she is on her way.'”
Kirkland added: “No six-year-old child should be able to tell somebody that they had handcuffs on them and they were riding in the back of a police car and taken to a juvenile center to be fingerprinted, mug shot.”
Kaia was one of two children arrested that day. The other is an eight-year-old child.
An internal investigation is ongoing, according to local news website Click Orlando.