Texas Daycare Teacher Charged With Bouncing 3-Month-Old Baby Around Like ‘a Ragdoll’

A teacher at a Texas daycare center has been arrested and charged with severely injuring a 3-month-old child in a baby bouncer, causing brain and retinal damage.

Jasmine Collum, 24, is charged with injury to a child and is being held at the Bell County Jail on a $125,000 bond, KCEN reported.

The Temple Police Department said officers were sent to the Baylor Scott and White McClaine Children’s Specialty Clinic at about 11 p.m. on October after a baby had been brought from a Temple daycare.

Investigators learned that the child had arrived at Ignite Learning Academy at about 8 a.m. but by 4 p.m. “was showing unusual lethargy” and was taken to the hospital by medics.

Police viewed video footage from the daycare, KCEN said, and saw Collum “swinging and bouncing” the baby forcefully, an affidavit filed in the case said. Her actions caused the infant to “flop around as though they were a ragdoll,” the document says.

Collum then put the baby into a bouncer and bounced it so hard that the child’s head and shoulders were thrown forward and backward onto the backrest repeatedly. The video also showed Collum pick up the baby and slamming them into the bouncer “so hard that the chair and the back of the child’s head appear to strike the concrete floor.”

The document describes Collum using her hands and feet to bounce the baby repeatedly and “aggressively.”

When the baby eventually becomes unresponsive, Collum took the infant to the daycare director, who called emergency medical services.

Doctors at the hospital found a “subdural hematoma in the left frontal subdural as well as inter-retinal and pre-retinal hemorrhages in both eyes,” the affidavit said. A doctor watched the video and said the injuries were consistent with what they saw Collum doing in the video.

The child’s current condition was unknown.

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[Featured image: Jasmine Collum/Bell County Sheriff’s Office]