WESTFIELD — A city woman charged with assault of a six-year-old boy with autism recently declined to defend herself in court and the charge was continued without a finding with probation for one year.
Brittany M. Smith, 31, of 19 Belmont St., Westfield, was arraigned last April on a charge of assault and battery on a person with an intellectual disability after Westfield Police school resource officer Michael Csekovsky reported to the court that, while working in the Autism Spectrum Disorder Program, she had to deal with a kindergarten boy who was acting out in her Paper Mill Elementary School classroom. He reported that she grabbed the boy’s hair and then “yanked the student by his hair and pulled him to the ground,” complaining about his behavior while using an expletive. Csekovsky went on to write that Smith then turned toward two other adults in the classroom and said, “nobody saw that.”
In an affidavit presented in court, Assistant District Attorney Jane Stream quoted three witnesses who had been interviewed by a Department of Children and Families worker. One of them, she wrote, said that “she observed the defendant yell at the victim, grab his hair, and pull him down to the ground, “shaking [him] like a beach towel.’” The other two witnesses corroborated that account of the situation.
