The bully who repeatedly locked an 8-year-old special needs student in a school locker was actually a teacher.
And now the child’s mother wants to sue the city’s Department of Education for $1 million over the “vile and abhorrent” events.
The brute, Upper West Side paraprofessional Jeremy Turner, was fired from his job at Mickey Mantle Elementary School after miffed mom Yaashia Harris learned about the incidents in January.
Turner, 31, of Brooklyn, was also arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault, unlawful imprisonment and injuring a minor.
He was released without bail and is due back in criminal court in July. His attorney did not immediately return a message.
But Harris also blames school officials for failing to protect her son, who has a speech impediment and attention deficit disorder.
The boy “was so terrorized while locked in the locker, screaming, frantically punching the locker in an effort to get out — that when I took him to the hospital, they diagnosed that he had fractured his right ring finger,” Harris says in court papers.
She is asking the court for permission to file her suit after the deadline because of a “law office mistake and error.”
The Broome Street mom says in the legal filing that her son explained “that Mr. Turner used this as punishment.”
“(He) would be put into the locker for up to 15 minutes, locked inside, more than once a day,” she says.
And on Jan. 27, when the boy broke his finger trying to escape, Turner allegedly ignored his pleas for help.
“Despite [the child’s] yelling and screaming and banging on the locker door, [he] was kept in said locker until Mr. Turner decided to release him,” according to the legal filing.
Turner tossed the boy in the metal locker after the child had acted out in class by drawing on his own face with a marker, yelling loudly, and kicking a teacher, according to school reports.
Harris’ court papers say Turner imposed the archaic punishment on at least three other children.
“If, as the kid said, he had done it before, other teachers must have seen it, someone knew something,” said the family’s attorney Mitchell Shapiro.
The boy was transferred to another school and is undergoing counseling for trauma.
Spokespeople for the Department of Education and the city’s Law Department did not immediately comment.