February 5, 2026
Three women were fired from an Inglewood daycare center after video caught one woman throwing a shoe at a 5-year-old girl.
Three daycare workers in Inglewood, California, were fired after a video showed one woman hurling a shoe at a 5-year-old girl.
Michelae Jones said she was outraged after viewing surveillance video that showed a worker at Destiny Development Center throwing a shoe at her five-year-old daughter, who has special needs, KTLA reported. The now-viral video shows the worker throwing the shoe as two other employees looked on, one of them appearing to laugh.
Jones said the school was slow to respond after she demanded to see the footage when her daughter came home and described the incident the same night it occurred.
“I’ve been with these people for three years,” Jones said. “I really thought my baby was safe with them.”
Jones said she contacted the school’s director, Danielle Williams, immediately after learning of the incident, but didn’t hear back for two weeks, prompting the child’s aunt, Kira Townsend, to question the school’s protocols.
“I want to know how often are they reviewing the footage?” Townsend said. “How do you have a business and you don’t review the footage unless a parent says something? Why do we have to wait for my niece to come and tell us, ‘Hey, my teacher hit me in the ear with a shoe.’”
Williams told Jones she was investigating the incident, later claiming the caregiver was tossing shoes into another room and that the child was accidentally struck in the head.
”My school, what we stand for, it’s not child abuse,” Williams said. “We don’t hire child abusers.”
Following an investigation, the caregiver, only identified as “Ms. Emily,” was fired, while the other two caregivers were put on suspension for not reporting the incident. But after finally reviewing the footage, the other two caregivers were also terminated.
“This is not a representation of my school,” Williams said. “It’s a representation of a bad hire. It’s not what we stand for. We don’t approve of abuse. I’ve been doing this for too long. I have a heart for kids. I love what I do. I love children.”
Jones said an apology and the caregiver’s firing aren’t enough, and is calling for criminal charges against Ms. Emily for assault and child abuse.
”You need to be in jail like any other child abuser,” she said. “That’s what I want. Justice.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is reportedly investigating the incident.
“People send their children to daycares and to schools, thinking that our children are safe, that they’ll be protected, you know, they’ll be loved, they’ll be treated with kindness,” Townsend said. “In this video, that did not display that at all.”
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