THE PARENT TRAP
Adult mob girl amid school beat
A 13-year-old Montessori student was mobbed by a group of parents as they egged on a classmate beating the teen — a horrifying incident caught on video last week outside the Yonkers school, legal papers claim.
Now the teenager’s mother, Alenna Merritt, has pulled her daughter out of Yonkers Montessori Academy and filed a legal notice of claim alerting the city of Yonkers that she plans to sue for $40 million over the alleged negligent supervision.
“I felt confused and scared — they kept yelling in my face,” the teen told The Post during a phone interview with her, her mother and lawyer. “When I got attacked, I was feeling alone and scared because nobody was there to help me.”
Merritt’s daughter, whose name is being withheld at the family’s request and will be referred to by her initials, E.W., was swarmed by four parents and a grandparent of other students on the baseball field on school grounds at the pre-K-12
Montessori at 7:20 a.m. April 18, according to the mother, the claim and video footage from three phones.
The family’s lawyer, Mark Shirian, said it appeared from the video that the group was looking for E.W.’s friend for some reason and because the pal wasn’t there, it was a guilt-by-association situation, and they went after E.W. instead.
Yelling and swearing
The parents can be heard in the footage yelling and swearing at E.W. before another student rushes her and starts slapping and pummeling her while the parents look on and E.W. attempts to defend herself by slapping back.
E.W. “was left unsupervised” and “violently assaulted on the premises of Yonkers Montessori Academy by students and parents and relatives of current students, during school hours,” according to the notice of claim filed Thursday with the city of Yonkers.
The teen “was viciously assaulted, beaten, and as a result has sustained severe physical, emotional, and psychological injuries,” reads the document, the legal precursor to filing a lawsuit against a municipal agency.
Merritt, 42, of Yonkers, told The Post that she is also pressing charges against the adults involved. She said that after reviewing cellphone videos with the cops, who were called to school that day, the police were able to see that some of the adults also attacked her daughter and have issued an arrest warrant for at least one of them.
A joint rep for the Yonkers Police Department and Yonkers Public Schools confirmed that police issued an arrest warrant for Nancy Rosa, 55, on charges of third-degree assault, second-degree harassment and endangering the welfare of a child. Rosa does not work for the schools, the representative said.
The investigation is ongoing, the rep said, declining to comment on whether further arrests could be expected.
Merritt said that when she got the call from her daughter around 7:30 a.m. that day, shortly after sending her off to school on the bus, she was “horrified” that this could have happened to her kid.
“I had my child screaming on the phone, screaming that she was hit . . . and I couldn’t even fathom it,” said Merritt, an executive director at a day-care center.
Going remote
Merritt said her daughter is now receiving schooling remotely from a tutor — in a program provided by the Yonkers Montessori Academy — for roughly the last 40 days of the school year, since the mom said she wouldn’t dream of returning E.W. to the school, fearing for her safety.
E.W. has already been accepted to a private all-girls Catholic school for the next school year.
Merritt filed a prior notice of claim against the same school in January alleging that staff sexually harassed E.W. by asking her to pull her bra and shake her breasts — believing she was hiding a vape on her person, the claim papers show.
Rosa and reps for the city, Yonkers BOE and the Montessori school did not return Post requests for comment.