Wow, I know this should be in the News thread, but this really pissed me off.
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Newburgh – An enraged mother with a violent past
and her two sons broke into a church on South Street Tuesday
and beat an elementary school
teacher unconscious, city police said yesterday.
Ertha Augustin was pummeled with a desk, telephone receiver, fists
and feet by Jamie Lynn Mereness
and her sons, police said. The trio unleashed their beating inside a basement classroom at Calvary Presbyterian Church, said Newburgh Detective Lt. Santo Centamore.
Augustin teaches at-risk kids who aren't thriving in a normal classroom setting in the Newburgh School District because of violent tendencies or aggressive behavior, school officials said.
Mereness' 12-year-old son was one of her students, police said,
and an altercation with the boy earlier in the day led to the late-afternoon beating.
According to Centamore, the attack unfolded this way:
Earlier in the day Tuesday, Augustin
and Mereness' 12-year-old boy got into a confrontation. Augustin called Mereness to discuss the problems. During that telephone conversation, the boy spit in Augustin's face.
Then the boy pushed the
teacher. Augustin told Mereness she intended to suspend the boy
and send him home. Mereness threatened the
teacher, who handed the phone to a security guard, police said. In that same phone call, police said, she told the guard that she intended to "come down
and punch the
teacher in the face."
The boy left the church to walk to his family's Johnston Street home. After class let out
and the security guard left on a school bus at 3:30 p.m., Augustin
and her 10-year-old son sat inside what they assumed was a locked building.
That's when Mereness, her 17-year-old son, William Ramos,
and her 12-year-old son broke into the basement classroom
and attacked Augustin, Centamore said.
"All three punched her, choked her. ... The 12-year-old hit her with a desk,
and she lost consciousness," Centamore said. "Before she lost consciousness, she said she saw one of them with a
chair in their hands."
When Augustin's son tried to call 911, Centamore said, Ramos punched the boy
and yanked the phone cord from the wall. The boy managed to escape
and get to a pay phone outside
and call for help.
The trio fled
and Augustin regained consciousness. She crawled to the security guard's desk
and dialed 911.
A warning
Mereness called the school district's Grand Street administration offices before the attack to say she was upset
and intended to hurt Augustin, police said yesterday.
District Superintendent R. Nick Johns said he was in a staff meeting when he got a note containing Mereness' name
and a general statement saying she was angry
and there had been a verbal confrontation.
Johns said as he left the meeting, he passed the note to Dr. Kate Farrell, assistant superintendent of school operations
and the administrator responsible for the program.
Farrell said she viewed the note
and immediately called a coordinator in charge of the campus "to find out what the situation was." She said the coordinator told her that a meeting was being scheduled with Mereness. The coordinator also told Farrell he was going to Calvary to check on the situation.
Based on the note
and her conversation with the coordinator, Farrell said there was no reason to expect the
teacher was in danger.
"Protection of our students
and staff is our highest priority," she said.
According to Farrell, minutes after her phone call, she got a call from the coordinator saying the
teacher had been beaten.
She immediately went to the school.
Yesterday, Johns tried to reconstruct the timeline of events
and said the district "did respond within minutes.
"Unfortunately," he said, "this is not the first
parent that's made a threat like this. We take every one of them very seriously."
A troubled past
Mereness, 34, appears to have a history of trouble with the law.
In 1992, she was arrested
and charged with felony first-degree
assault for stabbing her boyfriend. A year earlier, she was arrested
and charged with misdemeanor second-degree aggravated harassment.
And in 1996, Mereness was arrested
and charged with third-degree
assault, also a misdemeanor. Dispositions of those cases could not be learned late yesterday.
Around 11 p.m. Wednesday, Mereness
and her sons were arrested
and charged with second-degree burglary, second-degree
assault and second-degree gang
assault, all felonies. Ramos was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child
and third-degree
assault, both misdemeanors, for hitting Augustin's son, police said.
The 12-year-old was released into the custody of a neighbor Tuesday night. Yesterday, the boy was taken into Department of Social Services custody, along with Mereness' three other children, sources said. Mereness
and Ramos were sent to Orange County Jail in Goshen in lieu of $25,000 bail each.
Following the attack, Augustin was treated at the Newburgh campus of St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital. She had bumps on her head, a swollen face, contusions, neck
and back pain
and bruises all over her body.
She was home recovering last night.
Link to the Story
this really made me mad
Hybrid Mode
