Kristy Scott Gilpin turned herself in to the East Baton Rouge Parish jail Monday morning on a felony charge of cruelty to juveniles.
As we reported last month, Jamisha Augustine, mother of a six-year-old girl with a milk allergy, said her daughter was forced to clean up feces at Rollins Place Elementary in January after having an accident at school caused by milk ingestion. A felony arrest warrant was issued after investigators conducted interviews and reviewed the school’s surveillance video.
Ms Augustine described her interaction with school officials at the time:
I said what was the point of making her clean that up? Do y’all have janitors? She said they do have janitors, but she needed a form of discipline. There are consequences behind the things that she does. I’m saying, how can you punish her for having an accident? I asked if she would make her daughter do that, and she said she would.
Gilpin’s lawyer, John McClendon, said his client maintains her innocence and the child’s mother has grossly misrepresented what happened that day:
This is not a child that was sick. This was a child that was engaging in bad behavior. It wasn’t a lot to clean up and she was given the proper wipes and she cleaned it up and that was the end of it.
Discussing the arrest, he said of Gilpin:
It has devastated her. She’s a rockstar teacher. My phone has been ringing off the hook with support. 300 showed up in support for her last night. She’s devastated and upset about this.
Attorney Ron Haley, representing the family, responded:
What I can say to those who think this is fabricated, do you think the Zachary Police Department after doing an extensive investigation is going to go as far as to get a felony warrant if this is based off of gross misrepresentations? I can tell you that it’s not. This is done based on interviews, surveillance footage. This is not just taking a mother’s word or a child’s word for this and running amuck. That is not what happened here.
Eugene Collins, the former President of the Baton Rouge NAACP said he got involved after the mother received resistance from the community:
This was wrong to do to a child. Now we are looking at charges – a felony warrant filed. This teacher turned herself in and this department investigated and arrested a high-level administrator at a school system in the deep south. If that’s not enough for you, you don’t want to see the right side of this.
Gilpin’s lawyer confirmed that despite her arrest for a felony charge, the school system has not placed her on leave and she remains employed, working at another facility.
Said Haley:
If this was an adult working at a nursing home, and was arrested for cruelty to the infirm, would the best job be to go work at another nursing home? If this was a person working at bank charged with bank fraud, is it appropriate to have that person moved from one branch to another branch? This is ridiculous.
Here follows a WAFB-TV report on the incident:
It sounds like this was not allergy related, if it’s true that the student did not have milk that day. And smearing feces on walls is a big red flag.