Authorities in New York arrested a babysitter after footage from a ring camera showed her abusing a child of a friend that she was caring for. In an interview with CBS2, the child’s mother, Kristla Holmes, said the Monday incident occurred while she was at work.
According to Holmes, Chantal Mason, a long-time family friend, was babysitting her 2-year-old son at her Newburgh home when her Ring camera system sent her a notification after detecting motion in her living room.
What she saw after accessing the footage on her phone left her shocked. In the video, the toddler is seen covered in a blanket on a couch while Mason repeatedly slaps his back.
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“You see her foot laid on his head, laid on his butt, while she is just lounging on my couch,” Holmes said, adding that though this wasn’t the first time she had left her children in the care of Mason, she never suspected her friend of being abusive towards them until Monday’s incident.
“She told me that he just woke up, she fed him, and he was laying on the couch watching TV. So when I checked the camera, that’s not what he was doing. He was hysterically crying,” Holmes recalled.
After seeing the abuse, Holmes quickly returned home and reported the incident to the police. Mason was ultimately arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child, CBS2 reported.
“She deserves to be in jail. I want her in jail,” Holmes said, adding that the physical abuse left her son with minor bruises. She also expressed her worry over what may have occurred if she did not have cameras in her home.
Holmes said she decided to come forward with her story in an effort to caution parents. “You can’t trust nobody. You cannot trust your kids’ godparents. You can’t trust a long friend. You can’t trust nobody. Watch your own kids, protect your own kids,” Holmes said.
