Teacher body-slammed, physically abused special needs student, court documents say
WACO, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - A special education teacher is accused of assaulting and injuring a special needs student in a classroom, according to criminal complaint affidavits.
On April 2, a Waco Independent School District police detective was alerted by Child Protective Services about physical abuse that allegedly happened at Dean Highland Elementary on March 31.
A witness said Randi Lynn Fowler, 45, seated a 7-year-old boy by her desk when he started acting out. The child allegedly reached for Fowler’s backpack and she slapped the child across the face, according to the affidavit. The witness said the child began to cry and Fowler made him sit under her desk.
While investigating the alleged abuse on March 31, investigators learned about three other incidents involving Fowler and the student.
Detectives were provided with a video recording from Jan. 8. According to the affidavit, the recording shows Fowler sitting in a chair in front of a 7-year-old boy, “trapping” the child in a corner of a room designated as a safe space.
“The child is heard screaming and crying as the defendant sits in a chair with her back to the camera. A slapping sound can be heard,” according to the affidavit.
A voice is then heard in the recording saying, “Don’t hit me,” according to the affidavit.
Fowler is seen in the video making the child stand up, then “spins him around to face him away from her, and wraps her arm around his upper chest or neck area,” according to the affidavit.
Detectives met with a witness to the incident and that witness said the child was crying and mucus was coming out of his nostril.
“The witness observed [Fowler’s] hand over the child’s mouth as the child screamed and cried,” according to the affidavit.
A second video recording was provided to detectives and it shows, that on Jan. 10, Fowler carried the child with “her right arm wrapped around the child’s neck, with the child lifted into the air, walking him to the safe space area of the classroom,” the affidavit states, adding Fowler then “throws the child onto pillows in the safe space area.”
In another alleged incident on Dec. 18, 2024, Fowler placed her hands around the child’s neck, and later, her hands over the child’s mouth as he began to scream and cry, according to witnesses.
Fowler then “body-slammed the child onto a pile of pillows in what is designated in the classroom as a safe area,” according to the affidavit.
Witnesses said the child kicked Fowler, who reacted by kicking the child’s leg. The child reportedly cried until he fell asleep, according to the affidavit.
When the child woke up, he made an outcry to a witness that his leg hurt and that Fowler had “broken his leg,” the affidavit states.
The witness took the child to the school nurse and the child once again made an outcry, this time to the school nurse, saying “She kicked me.”
Fowler is charged with three counts of injury to a child. She is currently out on bond.
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