A North Carolina mother says a normal night at home turned into something she still can’t fully wrap her head around, after she noticed injuries on her 3-year-old daughter that didn’t come with any warning call from daycare.
In a report aired by WBIR Channel 10, Anna King described how the mother, Ashley Mejias, first realized something was wrong during a routine bedtime, when she saw what looked like burns on her daughter’s legs and started asking questions.
Mejias told the station she saw it while getting ready for bed, asked what happened, and her daughter answered plainly: she said the teacher did it.
“You Could See The String From The Hot Glue”
King’s reporting says Mejias found two burns – one on each leg – and what made the moment even more jarring was that it didn’t look like a random scrape or a mystery bruise kids sometimes pick up at play.
Mejias said you could actually see what looked like a string from hot glue on her child’s leg, which is the sort of detail that makes a parent’s stomach drop, because it suggests something deliberate happened and not an accident that could be shrugged off.
The mother also told the station the pain response seemed obvious once she started undressing her daughter, explaining that even clothing rubbing against the area hurt her.
It’s hard to overstate how quickly a parent’s mind runs in moments like that, because you’re not just thinking about what you’re seeing – you’re trying to reconstruct the entire day and figure out why no one told you, why your child didn’t come home with a basic incident report, and why you’re hearing about it only because bedtime happened.
What Court Documents Allegedly Show Happened
According to the details shared in the report, court documents indicate the daycare teacher – identified as LaShawna Williams – used a hot glue gun on a chair and then sat the child down, resulting in second-degree burns on the girl’s upper thighs.
That description, even without graphic specifics, lands as one of those “how is this real?” moments, because it takes an everyday craft tool and turns it into a direct injury, in an environment where the entire point is supposed to be safety, supervision, and basic care.
King’s piece makes clear that Mejias was also confused by the silence, because she said she hadn’t received a call from the school about the incident before finding the burns herself.
That part matters, because parents aren’t just paying for childcare – they’re trusting a system where injuries, even minor ones, are usually communicated quickly, and serious ones should never be a surprise found later at home.
The Teacher’s Admission And The School’s Response
In the Channel 10 report, Mejias said she took the injuries straight to administrators, and she also said the teacher admitted what she had done.
Mejias told the station that you don’t expect something like this to happen to your family, and when it does, the first reaction isn’t even anger – it’s confusion, trying to figure out how something this extreme could happen in a room full of adults.
The school, identified in the report as Concord Academy, provided a statement that King read on air, saying that once the child’s parent notified them, the employee was immediately removed from the classroom and her employment was terminated.
The statement, as presented in the report, framed the action as swift once administrators were made aware, which is an important distinction in how Mejias seems to view the situation: she describes what happened as abuse, but she also told the station she does not blame the school itself.
That is not a common thing to hear from a parent in a story this upsetting, and it suggests she’s drawing a line between one adult’s actions and the broader staff who responded after the fact – while still recognizing that trust is not something you can simply flip back on like a light switch.
The Criminal Case And The Sentence
King’s report says Williams later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile.
The sentence described in the report included 10 days in jail, six months of supervised probation, 24 hours of community service, and an order for no contact with the child or the child’s family.
Those penalties are concrete, but they also raise the question people tend to ask in cases involving young children: what does “accountability” look like when the harm is emotional as well as physical, and when the victim is too young to even fully explain what she felt in the moment?
A short jail sentence doesn’t erase what happened, and it doesn’t undo the mother’s new reality, which is now filled with second-guessing and quiet worry every time she drops her daughter off somewhere and walks away.
“I’m Supposed To Trust You With My Kid”
The emotional center of the story is Mejias herself, because King’s reporting doesn’t treat this as a court docket update – it treats it like what it really is for the family: a deep fracture in trust.
Mejias told the station she feels terrible, saying she wasn’t able to protect her daughter, which is one of those parental statements that isn’t logical but is painfully common, because parents often blame themselves even when they did everything a reasonable person could do.
At the same time, she was also clear about what this does to trust in childcare, saying, “I’m supposed to trust you with my kid all day,” and describing daycare workers as figures children should be able to trust, not fear.
That quote hits so hard because it’s the entire deal parents make with daycare, whether they say it out loud or not: I’m handing you my child, and I’m trusting you to be safe, patient, and responsible, even when the room is chaotic and you’re tired and a child is having a rough moment.
When that trust is broken in a dramatic way, it doesn’t just affect one family – it makes every parent listening quietly wonder what they would do if they discovered injuries like that at bedtime, with no call and no explanation waiting for them.
Why This Case Sticks With People Who Care About Childcare Safety
The report notes that the case has sparked outrage among childcare safety advocates, and it’s not hard to understand why.
This isn’t a “mistake” situation where a kid tripped or got pinched by a door; the alleged mechanism described – hot glue on a chair – sounds intentional enough that it instantly becomes a bigger conversation about screening, supervision, reporting, and whether corners get cut when staffing is stretched.
One thing that’s hard not to think about is how quickly the injury would have been discovered if the child hadn’t gone home that day, or if the burns were in a place less visible to a parent during normal routines.
That’s not speculation meant to inflame anything—it’s the practical question that every parent and every administrator should be willing to ask, because the only way systems improve is when uncomfortable questions get confronted instead of avoided.
The Complicated Choice To Stay Enrolled
One of the most surprising details in the report is that Mejias said her daughter is still enrolled at the daycare.
King explains that while trust has been shaken, the mother says she is satisfied with how administrators handled the situation once they were made aware, even as she continues to worry about lasting effects that can’t be seen right now.
That choice might confuse outsiders, but it’s also the kind of reality that makes childcare stories so complicated: families don’t always have easy options, and sometimes a parent has to weigh “the place I know” against “the uncertainty of starting over somewhere else,” especially if the child has already built routines and attachments.
It also shows how the impact of something like this doesn’t end when the teacher is fired or sentenced, because the family still has to live inside the aftermath – doctor visits, emotional recovery, and that nagging feeling that innocence got interrupted too early.
An Uneasy Lesson
As the station reported it, the former teacher is no longer employed at the daycare, and a court case has already produced a guilty plea and a sentence, which means the legal system has at least put a marker down that this wasn’t acceptable.
But for Ashley Mejias, the bigger consequence sounds like the one she can’t measure yet: what this does to her daughter’s sense of safety and what it does to her own ability to trust adults who work with children for a living.
If there’s a lesson that sits underneath Anna King’s reporting, it’s that childcare safety isn’t only about big threats that make headlines; it’s also about the basic daily safeguards – communication, transparency, quick reporting, and supervision strong enough that a parent never has to find out something this serious by noticing burns while helping a toddler get ready for bed.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
