“Do you want me to hit you?” Ashley Richards allegedly yelled at a 4-year-old boy as she punched him repeatedly while holding him over her legs. The Florida preschool teacher, who was fired from her job, now faces a felony charge of child abuse in connection with the alleged hitting, which was caught on a witness’s video. The boy allegedly told the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office that he and his brother had gotten into a fight on the playground when Richards approached him and began punching him in the head and the eye. The witness heard screaming and came upon the scene of Richards “repeatedly punching the child with both an open and closed fist to the back and side of the head,” and “yelling at the victim,” the witness told sheriff’s deputies. However, Richards reportedly denies ever hitting the child, telling deputies she was, in fact, consoling him rather than punishing him. She allegedly admitted to putting her hands over the boy’s mouth when he laughed at her for unspecified reasons.
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