Officials calling teacher a ’hero’
No detention hearing has been held for a teen accused of child abuse in a case that has captured national attention.
J.D. Sumner
LEESBURG — The teacher who alerted authorities that a former student of hers had posted a graphic video showing him launching a baby into the air said she is humbled at being called a hero by local law enforcement and knew that the incident needed to be reported.
Tuesday, Lee County sheriff’s deputies arrested a 16-year-old boy and charged him with a felony count of child cruelty after a video surfaced on the popular Web site YouTube. The video showed him using an inflatable pillow to launch an 8-month-old infant several feet through the air.
A detention hearing has not yet been scheduled for the teen, who is being held in a Youth Detention Center in Cordele, District Attorney Cecilia Cooper said.
His identity has not been made public because of state privacy laws regarding juvenile offenders, investigators say.
According to an incident report issued Wednesday, Deborah Baltenberger, a teacher at Lee County High School, was checking the Myspace Web page of a student who had left a comment saying she was upset with the teen in the video. After Baltenberger e-mailed the girl about the comment, the girl replied that the boy had a video on YouTube that showed “himself hurting a baby.”
After national media outlets picked up the story Wednesday, Baltenberger said she was conflicted about how to handle the situation, but knew something had to be done.
“I’m glad that I called. I just didn’t expect all of this attention,” she said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I wasn’t exactly sure what I should do. After I saw it, I knew I had to tell somebody, but I didn’t know if I should call the sheriff’s office or who, but I knew I needed to tell someone.”
Sheriff’s officials are calling her a hero for taking steps to protect a child, who could have been seriously injured.
“The sheriff has called her a hero because she did what was right,” Col. Duane Sapp of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said. “Had she not come forward we don’t know what would have happened.”
Baltenberger said that she was humbled by the attention, but doesn’t believe she quite fits the hero bill.
According to Lee County Sheriff Harold Breeden, the parents of the child left him with another family while they were out of town for a few days. The incident is believed to have happened Sunday, when the son of the adults who were charged with babysitting the child had the 16-year-old boy over.
As word of the incident has spread across the nation, investigators are drawing the ire of concerned citizens who believe that the teen should be charged as an adult and his identity made public because of the violent nature of the crime.
“The Legislature has deemed that this felony charge doesn’t allow me to prosecute him in Superior Court,” Cooper said. “So we, instead, have to let this case go through the Juvenile Court system.”
When asked why additional charges against the child who videotaped the incident haven’t been filed, Cooper said that she has to base her cases on evidence and, at this point, the charges that have been levied are the ones that are supported by the evidence.
If convicted, the teen could be sentenced to either 60 days in a detention program, probation or could be remanded to the Department of Juvenile Justice, which could decide to either release him to his parents or lock him up. If he was sentenced to be detained, he would have to be released by the time he turns 21, Cooper said.
Because of his age and the Juvenile Court system, any hearing about the issue will be held behind closed doors, Cooper said.
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