The arrest of a 10-year-old girl with learning disabilities is at the center of a controversy over how police detained her and ultimately decided to file charges against her following an incident at her Texas elementary school.
McKenna Lombardo was arrested on May 17, 2024, at Cryar Intermediate School in Conroe, Texas, KWTX reported.
A police report states that teachers called police to the school after the fifth-grader “threw markers,” behaved “physically aggressively,” and “pressed her (the assistant principal’s) arm against a door frame.”
The bodycam footage showed the officers arriving at the schoolyard and meeting the teachers and McKenna.
“She blocked me at the door. I’m not pressing charges, just so you know,” a teacher can be heard telling an officer on the bodycam video. “That’s why I called you, because I didn’t know where we were going.”
Although the teacher expressed her desire not to press charges, subsequent conversations with one of the police officers and another faculty member revealed that she had decided to change course.
Teacher #2: “She attacked you.”
Teacher #1: “She attacked me. I’m bleeding.”
Policeman: “You’re bleeding.”
Teacher #1: “No, she pushed me against the door. She was blocking the door and my arm happened to be there.”
Policeman: “It’s up to you as far as the arm is concerned. If you want to do something with it? That’s entirely your decision.”
Teacher #1: “I mean, if it helps.”
The bodycam video shows teachers escorting McKenna to the school office, accompanied by police officers. On the way, they all stop at a restroom.
McKenna goes in and refuses to come back out. Even after she comes out, she tries to go back in, but her teachers hold out their arms to escort her out while a police officer orders her to leave the restroom.
The officer is then seen grabbing McKenna’s arm and attempting to handcuff her. She protests and says she wants to get her shoes. The officer tells her, “I’m going to get your shoes.”
After finally handcuffing her, he accompanies McKenna to the school office and then speaks to the two teachers again.
Officer: “Did you think about that?”
Teacher No. 1: “I feel silly doing this.”
Officer: “I saw much less. … I saw much less.”
Teacher No. 1: “So what would the process look like?”
Police officer: “Well, she’s already in handcuffs, so she’s going to the juvenile detention center. She’s going to be charged with assault, assault on a public officer. They’re going to take your statement and take two photos.”
Teacher #1: “Even if it was just like I was in the way?”
Policeman: “Oh yeah, it doesn’t matter.”
At some point, McKenna is led to a patrol car and placed in the back seat.
Her father was also called to the school. When he arrived there, he immediately questioned her detention and then demanded her release.
“I want her handed over to me, please. Will she be charged immediately?” McKenna’s father can be heard asking a police officer on the bodycam video.
The police officer Lombardo spoke to replied, “She is under arrest.”
Bodycam footage showed the officer stepping aside to call the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office to discuss the assault charges against McKenna.
“She attacked a teacher, threw her against the wall and caused a small cut on her forearm,” he said in an interview with the public prosecutor.
The accusation was acknowledged.
Three days after the incident, another employee filed another assault complaint against McKenna, telling police that the 10-year-old had slammed her hand against a paper towel dispenser while they were in the restroom.
“I was scared. I was angry and I was sad,” McKenna said, recalling the moments before the arrest.
The fifth-grader explained that before police were called to the school, she got into an argument with a friend in class. She said she was blocking the door and her teacher’s arm was in the way, but she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
The arrest also came just one year after the passage and implementation of a new Texas law called the “No Kids in Cuffs Law,” which states that a police officer “shall not detain a student in fifth grade or younger unless the student poses a serious danger to himself or herself or another person.”
“I’m worried because I don’t want it to happen to anyone else,” McKenna noted. “Younger than me. Older than me. I know I kind of misbehaved and didn’t listen to the teacher, but I didn’t think I was going to get arrested.”
McKenna’s father, a former police officer, said he was horrified when he saw the bodycam videos, believing the officers pressured the teachers as they discussed possible charges.
“They did everything they could to get a felony charge against a 10-year-old. This is just sick. I mean a 10-year-old with special needs,” said Matt Lombardo.
He said that his daughter has autism, among other things, and that the school was aware of it. He added that the officers had no reason to handcuff his daughter because she did not pose an immediate threat to anyone before her arrest.
A state senator who authored the No Kids in Cuffs law also viewed the bodycam videos and expressed the same concerns as Lombardo, adding that the reasoning behind the charges against McKenna was “invented after the fact.”
“However, it appears that (the teacher) was pressured by the police officer to say she was assaulted when she said, ‘I feel really silly about this,’ if I were the attorney in the case,” said State Senator Royce West.
McKenna was twice charged with assault on an officer, but the charges were dropped in July after a hearing before Montgomery County officials where the Lombardo family expressed concerns about the arrest and McKenna’s treatment by police.
A report released this year by the Government Accountability Office found that in the years before the COVID pandemic, students of color with disabilities were arrested at higher rates than white students with disabilities and their peers without disabilities. The researchers also found that arrests are more common when police are involved in student discipline actions.
In 2020, that rate declined as home and distance learning increased across the country, but students with disabilities were still disproportionately disciplined.
