DAYTON — The Montgomery County prosecutor has not yet announced any charges against a former Dayton Public School employee caught on tape hitting a three-year-old child.
The video of the autistic, non-verbal child being knocked down surfaced Monday and the parents have been looking for answers ever since.
Robert Tootle and Taneshia Lindsay saw the video of their child being knocked down and realized how serious the injuries might be.
They brought three-year-old Braylen to Dayton Children’s Hospital for a full evaluation while also working to educate others about their son.
“Look this stuff up, it happens all over the US, these kids get mistreated,” Lindsay said.
Lindsay is horrified by what happened to her son. It’s what she was most fearful of in sending him to school.
Braylen’s dad said his son’s condition kept them from realizing how serious the situation was earlier.
“It’s not the same, you can ask, ‘How was your day? It was fine, I like going to school,’ versus, you say something to a kid that is non-verbal, you don’t get a response, so we wouldn’t know,” Tootle said.
News Center 7 spoke to Premiere Health Regional Medical Director Dr. Joseph Allen who told us everyone should expect some unusual reactions from autistic children.
>> ‘It just made me mad;’ Parents react after Dayton school staff member hit their nonverbal child
“Just different, right, that’s what that means, reaction to stimuli is different than what we expect and that’s ok,” Allen said.
Allen says children diagnosed with autism can have a wide variety of noticeable signs.
Some have mild struggles with social cues, others are non-verbal or don’t always interact with their environment at all.
“Once again, if they don’t know how to interact with stimuli, what response do they know? I know I want to get away from it, so they bolt,” Allen said.
Allen backed the parent’s statements that it is not unusual for autistic children to take off running.
The parents and their legal team are now demanding more answers about the former classroom aide’s qualifications and want him criminally charged. They’re also asking for more understanding.
“We need help, our kids need help, society needs to be educated on autism and they need to be trained to deal with these kids,” Lindsay said.
Braylen Tootle’s parents say as they continue to press their own son’s case forward legally, they also want to be advocates for other parents of autistic children.
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