A Texas daycare worker has been arrested after allegedly being caught on camera kicking toddlers 134 times.
44-year-old Catherine Guziejka has been charged with six counts of injury to a child with the intent to cause bodily injury. The campaign of physical violence against the two-year-olds took place between July and October this year, police say, at Punkin’ Doodles Day Care in Lindale, Texas, approximately 200 miles north of Houston.
The investigation began late last month when a daycare employee reviewed the facility’s security camera footage. During this review, the employee allegedly witnessed Guziejka kicking a two-year-old boy in the lower back while he was on the floor.
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The employee informed the victim’s father about the incident on October 23, who immediately contacted the Smith County Sheriff’s Office and filed a report.
Upon reviewing the daycare’s footage, investigators claimed they found evidence of Guziejka physically assaulting six different two-year-olds 134 different times.
Many of these attacks on the toddlers involved a similar scenario where the victim was watching something on television, and Guziejka would allegedly approach them from behind and kick them in the lower back using her right foot, as reported by Nacogdoches, Texas CBS and CW affiliate KYTX.
Investigators reported multiple instances of abusive behavior on the footage, including Guziejka standing on the toddlers’ hands, aggressively moving them around in their sleep, and grabbing a sleeping child by the arm and dragging them to changing tables.
While changing the children, Guziejka would allegedly also regularly force the children to stare at the wall instead of the television on the opposite side of the room by aggressively holding the victims’ heads down.
Melanie Dawn Law, the former owner of Punkin’ Doodles Day Care, reportedly reviewed the security footage before speaking to police. During her law enforcement interview, Law reportedly confirmed that Guziejka had been assaulting the children since July with at least 100 different instances of abuse being uncovered.
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She said Guziejka – who was initially hired in September 2023 – was fired immediately after the alleged abuse was revealed and all of the footage depicting her alleged abuse was then turned over to investigators.
Law spoke to KSLA and said that since the revelations of abuse came to light, she has sold the day care facility to a new owner who is going to reopen in December under a new name.
Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith gave an interview to KLTV, discussing the details surrounding Guziejka’s arrest and the potential next steps. He expressed relief that none of the children suffered severe injuries from Guziejka, stating that it has been restricted to “minor to medium bruising” so far.
“We’ve got six charges we think that are provable in a court of law,” Smith shared with the station. “Now we’re going forward and detectives are combing through hours of video to see if there’s any other forms of abuse that have not been reported.”
Guziejka is currently detained at the Smith County Jail with a bond set at $450,000, according to the sheriff’s office.
