Legal filings show that last week outside the Yonkers school, a group of parents mobbed a 13-year-old Montessori student, cheering on a classmate who was hitting the teen.
Alenna Merritt, the teenager’s mother, has pulled her daughter out of Yonkers Montessori Academy and filed a formal notice of claim, informing the city of Yonkers that she intends to sue for $40 million for claimed negligent supervision.
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“I felt confused and scared—they kept yelling in my face,” the youngster told The Post during a phone chat with her, her mother, and her attorney. “The attack left me feeling alone and scared, with no one to assist 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 surrounded 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. on April 18, according to the mother, the claim, and video footage from three phones.
According to the family’s lawyer, Mark Shirian, the video appears to show that the group was looking for E.W.’s friend for whatever reason, and because the friend was not present, it was a guilt-by-association situation, so they went after E.W.
The tape shows the parents yelling and swearing at E.W. before another kid rushes and begins slapping and pummeling her while the parents watch, and E.W. attempts to defend herself by slapping back.
Students, parents, and relatives of current students “left E.W. unsupervised” and “violently assaulted him on the premises of Yonkers Montessori Academy during school hours,” according to a notice of claim the city of Yonkers filed on Thursday.
The teen “was viciously assaulted, beaten, and, as a result, has sustained severe physical, emotional, and psychological injuries,” according to the document, which serves as the legal basis for initiating a case against a municipal body.
Merritt, 42, of Yonkers, told The Post that she is also seeking charges against the adults involved.
She stated that the police, after analyzing cell-phone recordings with the officers called to the school that day, discovered that some of the adults also attacked her daughter and issued a warrant for the arrest of at least one of them.
A joint representative for the Yonkers Police Department and Yonkers Public Schools said that Nancy Rosa, 55, was arrested on counts of third-degree assault, second-degree harassment, and endangering a child’s welfare.
According to the spokesperson, Rosa does not work for the schools.
The investigation is still underway, according to the representative, who declined to say whether more arrests are likely.
Merritt stated that when she received the call from her daughter about 7:30 a.m. that day, shortly after dropping her off at school via bus, she was “horrified” that this might have occurred to her child.
Merritt, an executive director of a daycare center, described her child screaming on the phone about being hit, which she found difficult to understand.
For the last 40 days of the school year, Merritt’s daughter has been receiving online instruction from a tutor through a Yonkers Montessori Academy program. The mother expressed her unwillingness to send E.W. back to school due to concerns about her safety.
For the upcoming school year, a private all-girls Catholic school has already accepted E.W.
Merritt filed a prior notice of claim against the same school in January, stating that staff sexually harassed E.W. by asking her to pull her bra and jiggle her breasts, believing she was hiding a vaporizer, according to the claim papers.
Merritt stated that after the second event, she thought, “Here we go again.”
Merritt told The Post, “We have children who are not receiving supervision and protection.” “I’m not going to put her in harm’s way or put her in the lion’s den every day.”
Merritt and her lawyer, Shirian, are wondering if school security and personnel purposefully did not intervene in last week’s altercation in retaliation for the pending action against the school.
Shirian stated that Merritt and her daughter have been “rightfully traumatized by this ordeal” and urged the school to take “decisive action to rectify this situation and prevent such incidents from happening in the future.”
“This egregious failure to ensure the safety of students is utterly unacceptable,” Shirian told The Post.
According to the lawyer, his clients may consider taking legal action against the involved parents, but only after the completion of the criminal investigation and any subsequent criminal cases.
The most recent claim notice accuses Yonkers, the Yonkers Board of Education, and Yonkers Montessori Academy of negligent supervision, hiring, and infliction of mental distress, among other things.
The previous notice of claim included many of the defendants.
Rosa, representatives from the city, the Yonkers BOE, and the Montessori school did not respond to Post requests for comment.
