A 59-year-old Florida teacher from Deltona, Vilma Otero, is being accused of putting a 3-year-old autistic boy in a chokehold. This all allegedly went down last week at Forest Lake Elementary in Deltona. And let's just say she'll be getting a little more than detention after school. Volusia County deputies say that Otero is facing a felony child abuse charge.
According to FOX35, Otero works in the classroom with another staff member, a paraeducator, who saw it all happen. She says she looked over and saw the boy trapped between Otero's legs in some kind of chokehold. She didn’t just stand there doing nothing about it either. She snapped some pictures and went straight to the authorities to report it.
The boy later told deputies that he "got in trouble at school" and that the Florida teacher, Otero "hurt" him. They also noticed some redness around his neck, which lined up with what the paraeducator had reported.
Florida Teacher Arrested:
When the deputies got to Otero, she didn't make much of a fuss. She did mention she had been mostly working with kids who have disabilities as a teacher for 36 years. And while she admitted that restraining a kid physically like that would be wrong, she still denied doing it even when they showed her those pictures.
After all was said and done, she was taken jail without any further incident.
Volusia County Schools aren't just going to this sort of behavior lightly either. They’ve put Otero on administrative leave and are looking into the situation. They say they’re all about the safety of their students and are taking this whole thing very seriously, with their Professional Standards department digging into the case to figure out what happens next.
