ORMOND BEACH, Fla. – A day care worker blamed a headache and losing her temper for causing her to slap, shake and roughly handle four babies, according to the Ormond Beach Police Department.
An office manager at Dream City Academy repeatedly heard a child crying around noon on May 23. When she checked the facility's surveillance cameras, she noticed 65-year-old Katherine Weitz, who was watching over the room for 1-year-old babies, roughly handling a child, the report said.
The business owner and program director were contacted while the officer manager went into the room with the 1-year-olds to check on the children.
Police said that surveillance video showed 30 incidents of Weitz mistreating four of the children in the room between 11:50 a.m. and 12:25 p.m., as she was trying to get them to nap.
The children were slapped in the face, shaken, grabbed by their arms and legs to be flipped over, dropped on their cots, their heads were pushed into their cots and they were roughly handled, according to the affidavit.
"If they would get back up, she would pick one up and violently shake them, she did this to several of the children," Ormond Beach Police Department public information officer Keith Walker said.
Police said the children did not have any physical injuries.
When day care management officials confronted Weitz with the allegations, she admitted to going "a little overboard," the report said.
"I woke up with a terrible headache this morning. When I got up, I told myself that I should just call out, but I didn't. I wish I had just called out," she said, according to the affidavit.
She was fired and a police report was filed the next day.
"To drop off your child in the care of somebody else to think that they're going to be protected and when you find out about it, it's disgusting," Walker said.
The four victims' parents said they were horrified by what they saw in the surveillance footage and they wished to pursue charges to ensure that Weitz could no longer work with children, according to authorities.
Police said they went to Weitz's home on Thursday with an investigator from the Department of Children and Families and Weitz told them she "lost (her) temper that day."
She couldn't remember grabbing the children by their arms and legs but did admit to slapping and shaking the children, the report said.
"I was extremely frustrated and I overdid everything," Weitz said, according to authorities.
Weitz was arrested Monday on four counts of child abuse.