CONWAY, AR — Three teenage babysitters were arrested on child endangerment charges after a Snapchat video showed them taunting a 1-year-old baby girl with a stun gun and “laughing hysterically,” police in Conway, Arkansas, said. The teens, all females, range in age from 15-17, but were not identified because they are minors.
Police Officer Brittani Little was dispatched to the Conway Regional Medical Center on Monday, July 9, to investigate a report of child abuse. In her report, Little wrote that “you can see and hear the electric prongs on the Taser lighting up.”
“The baby is visibly terrified and begins crying and trying to get away,” Little wrote. “You can hear the person recording laughing and see [a second teen] laughing.”
The video shows one of the teens walking to the end of the bed, where she “stretches her arm out and zaps the Taser two more times in the child’s direction,” Little said.
Another video showed the girls laughing and joking “when one of them forcefully struck the child in the head,” according to a Conway police news release.
Elyssia Watkins, the baby’s mother, had been made aware of the video and sought treatment for the child at the hospital, then called police.
She told television station KXXV that she was so rattled by the video footage that she had to leave work.
“I couldn’t even stay at work today,” Watkins said. “I just keep thinking about it,” she said. “Why do they think it’s a laughing matter?”
The baby wasn’t injured, police said.
The teens, where were taken to the Faulkner County Juvenile Detention Center, appeared in court Tuesday. Each faces a charge of endangering the welfare of a minor in the first degree.
“They do need to go to jail, but I hope someone really talks to them and they get some counseling,” Watkins told KXXV.
Watch the video below:
Photo by Renee Schiavone / Patch