Inset: Kristie Kovarcik (Middletown Police Department). Background: The day care where she allegedly abused a child (WTNH).
A Connecticut woman and onetime day care employee has accepted legal culpability over an incident in which a 2-year-old in her care was picked up and thrown into a wall “like a piece of luggage.”
On Friday, Kristie Kovarcik, 48, pleaded guilty to one felony count of risk of injury to a child and three misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment in the second degree.
The underlying incident occurred in October 2023. Police were not alerted about the crime until January 2024. Kovarcik was arrested in February 2024 and charged, after a long investigation, in March 2024.
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On the day in question, Middletown Police Department detectives responded to a report of a teacher assaulting a toddler at the Town & Country Early Learning Center on South Main Street in Middletown – a medium-sized city located roughly 15 miles south of Hartford.
The facility itself notified the victim”s parents about the incident and invited them to watch internal surveillance footage showing what happened, according to police. After watching the video provided, the child’s parents went to police and demanded that Kovarcik be arrested.
One parent described the surveillance footage – saying Kovarcik walked over to the toddler, grabbed the child by the shirt with both hands and “launch[ed] the victim through the air like a piece of luggage,” according to an arrest warrant obtained by Greenwich Time.
Detectives used less expressive language to describe the incident, instead settling on a description wherein the defendant allegedly “picked up the minor child and tossed the child to the side,” and left a bruise, according to a press release issued by the police department.
“The child’s head then struck a nearby wall, causing a minor contusion above his/her right eye. The Director of the facility heard a commotion and pulled up the surveillance camera for Kovarcik’s room,” police wrote in the press release. “She witnessed Kovarcik toss the child aside and heard the child’s head strike the wall. The Director entered the room and removed the child. She then reported the incident to the parents and DCF as required.”
That incident, however, was not the only one.
On Jan. 8, 2023, the defendant allegedly abused other children.
“Kristie (Kovarcik) is observed lifting a second young child out of a chair by (the) shirt near (the child’s) shoulders and dropping (the child) to the ground,” the warrant reportedly reads.
Then, some 10 minutes later, the defendant is reportedly seen “kicking the victim, while the victim is already on the ground,” according to the warrant. A few hours later, Kovarcik was seen “forcefully pushing onto the chest” of a different child while trying to make the child sleep during nap time.
After that, on Nov. 1, 2023, footage showed Kovarcik “forcefully shoving” a child out of her way, Greenwich Time reported.
“I just kinda lost my cool,” Kovarcik allegedly said during an interview with law enforcement, adding that the inciting incident occurred during a “very chaotic” day, Greenwich Time reported.
Kovarcik also initially denied mistreating any of the children in her care and claimed she was often left alone with the children and denied breaks for lunch by her superiors. Authorities, however, said those claims were disproved by the surveillance footage.
After her arrest, the day care facility released a statement about the incident to New Haven-based ABC affiliate WTNH.
“Upon observing the incident involving Ms. Kovarcik on our internal camera monitoring system, we immediately initiated an internal investigation, notified the appropriate state authorities, and terminated the employee,” a spokesperson said. “Our safety and training protocols are amongst the strictest in our industry, and we treat any such incident with the utmost seriousness. The safety and protection of the children in our care is always our top priority.”
Additional charges in the case were filed in August 2024, Middletown court records show. The defendant was released on bond thereafter.
Kovarcik is slated to appear in court for sentencing on Sept. 25,
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
