YORK COUNTY, Va. — A teacher in York County was arrested Friday after allegedly assaulting a student twice in the past week.
According to the York-Poquoson Sheriff's Office, they received a report Friday that a teacher at Yorktown Elementary School had assaulted a student on two different occasions - one on March 21, and another on March 24. Both incidents were reported to the Sheriff's Office on the 24th.
The Sheriff's Office said they conducted a thorough investigation, which led them to arrest and charge the teacher, identified as 53-year-old Stacey Ames of York County, with two counts off Simple Assault. They said she was taken to Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail where she was booked, and that she has been released on an unsecured bond.
Sheriff Ron Montgomery subsequently told us the victim is a 5-year-old girl. He said another teacher witnessed Ms. Ames pick the child up off the ground by her arms and then throw her two to three feet, at which point the child landed on her feet, but then fell to the ground. The sheriff said the child wasn't injured.
He also said that the first incident was witnessed by someone other than the other teacher that initially reported an assault, but that he didn't know why the first incident wasn't reported immediately after it happened.
No further information about possible court appearances was yet available.
Schools in Yorktown have been the focus of several news reports this week after a bag of bullets was found at Yorktown Elementary School - the same school where the alleged assaults took place - on Wednesday. Then on Friday, a scrap of paper was found in a student restroom at Yorktown Middle School with writing indicating a potential threat to the school leading to a partial lockdown.