San Angelo, Texas — A lawsuit filed against a private Texas preschool has revealed deeply disturbing allegations that a teacher repeatedly terrorized a 4-year-old girl in her care, telling the child her parents wanted her sent to jail and threatening to lock her in a “dungeon” — all while school administrators allegedly watched surveillance footage and did nothing.
The legal complaint, filed by parents Patrick and Mellissa Killingsworth, accuses a teacher at Trinity Lutheran School and Early Childhood Center of subjecting their daughter to continuous screaming, belittling, shoving, pushing, yanking, dragging and hitting over an extended period of time.
According to the lawsuit, the teacher was captured on the school’s own surveillance cameras dragging the young girl across her classroom, locking her alone in a dark closet and humiliating her in front of classmates. The educator allegedly mocked the child while she cried asking for her parents, recruited other students to join in the taunting and pretended to dial 911 on her cellphone while threatening the preschooler with arrest.
“Your mommy and daddy are so tired of how you act that they don’t want you,” the teacher allegedly told the crying child. “You need to go to jail.”
Perhaps most alarming, the complaint alleges that school leadership was not caught off guard. Text messages cited in the lawsuit indicate the school’s director and principal received more than four months of explicit warnings from the teacher herself that she was approaching a mental health breakdown. The school’s alleged response was to keep sending her back into the classroom.
School leaders reportedly failed to intervene even after the director personally reviewed recorded footage of the abuse the same day it occurred.
The Killingsworths are now suing the school and its administrators, alleging they prioritized staffing over child safety and attempted to conceal evidence rather than address the abuse.
Trinity Lutheran School has not issued a public statement responding to the allegations.
The case has drawn widespread attention as a stark warning about oversight failures in early childhood education settings.
