South Fayette police accuse day care worker of dropping 2-year-old

A Carnegie woman was caught on video grabbing, flipping and throwing a 2-year-old on April 24 at a South Fayette daycare center where she was working, South Fayette police said.

Kimberly Lynne Seibel, 27, faces felony charges of aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of children.

Three employees of Kingdom Care Learning Center saw the alleged behavior on surveillance video, immediately intervened, terminated Seibel and escorted her from the center, police said.

“We had no way of knowing this could happen,” Bob Pilardi, pastor of Calvary Full Gospel Church told the Tribune-Review on Tuesday.

The center operates as a ministry of the church, Pilardi said, and he serves as president of Kingdom Care Learning Center.

Seibel had been employed with the center about a year, had all of her required clearances and a college degree in the field, Pilardi said.

The toddler’s parents took her to UPMC Children’s Hospital after finding red marks on her body, police said.

It didn’t appear as if the child was hurt, Pilardi said.

“We feel so bad for the parents,” he said.

The employees had been meeting in an office at the center discussing the neatness of Seibel’s room when one of the workers saw Seibel throwing books and cards around the room. Some of the books and cards nearly hit other children. They rewound the video and observed Seibel’s interactions with the 2-year-old, police said.

“Seibel appeared to be very extremely irritated and agitated toward (the child),” police wrote in an affidavit.

Police and the child’s parents were called, and the daycare center showed authorities video that showed Seibel roughly handling the toddler and ultimately throwing the child onto a mattress between 12:45 and 12:48 p.m. April 24, police said.

Seibel was arrested April 26, arraigned by District Judge Maureen McGraw-Desmet and released on her own recognizance awaiting a preliminary hearing. The attorney representing Seibel, public defender, Sarah E. Coblentz, didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.

As a precaution, Kingdom Care Learning Center will be double-staffing each room. It will also remove any full doors on rooms the children are in and replace them with half-doors to increase staff accountability, Pilardi said.

“That’s the only way I can deal with this,” he said.

Each of the center’s rooms is under video surveillance, which doesn’t include sound, and those videos are regularly monitored by the staff, Pilardi said.

“We’ve been in operation for 12 years. This is our first occurrence of anything like this and hopefully our last,” he said.