Questions surround the handcuffing of a 10-year-old Texas girl with special needs while at school: "I was scared"
TEXAS — In an incident raising questions about school discipline and law enforcement practices, police handcuffed a 10-year-old girl with learning disorders following an incident at school.
Conroe ISD Police arrested McKenna Lombardo, a fifth grader at Cryar Intermediate School, last May.
"I was scared. I was angry and I was sad," McKenna recalled.
The incident, captured on police body cameras, reveals a sequence of events and comments that has McKenna's father, Matt Lombardo, a former police officer, demanding answers.
The family reached out to the I-Team after seeing the videos, watching how McKenna was disciplined, and listening to the discussion officers and administration had during the situation.
Lombardo told the I-Team he believes the school is aware McKenna has autism. And, Lombardo provided the I-Team a doctor's note explaining some of her medical disorders.
Why officers are called
On May 17, 2024, Cryar Intermediate administration called the Conroe ISD Police Department after what the police report describes as McKenna being "physically aggressive and…throwing markers." The report also states that she had "pinned her [associate principal's] arm against the (a) door frame."
Footage from the body cameras shows officers arriving at the playground where McKenna was with school administrators on the field. She is picking up rocks and then finds a frog along the fence.
One teacher, standing several yards away, is heard talking to the officer as he arrives. She explains what's happened, "…she blocked me in the door. I'm not filing charges just so you guys know."
The teacher then tells the officer, "…that's why I called you because I didn't know where we were headed."
As the officer and administrators walk McKenna inside headed to the office, they stop at a bathroom where McKenna refuses to come out. The situation escalates as McKenna will not stop dispensing paper towels from the dispenser. She walks to the doorway and then heads back inside the bathroom where the teachers stretch out their arms to stop her from going all the way back inside.
Put in handcuffs
As McKenna tries to dodge the teachers and go back into the restroom, the officer tells McKenna to come out.
While she turns away from his arms as he tries to handcuff her, the officer demands she put her hands behind her back.
McKenna continually tells the officer she wants to go get her shoes. The officer tells McKenna, "I will get your shoes."
He then puts handcuffs on her and walks her to the office. There is no further discussion about her shoes at this point.
In the minutes leading up to this, the administrators are repeatedly heard telling the officers McKenna's dad is on the way.
On body cam video, McKenna's father is eventually seen outside the office after the officer has put McKenna in a squad car.
Lombardo is seen and heard pleading with officers to release his daughter.
"I would like her to be released to me, please. Are you charging her right this second? If you're not charging her…, are you charging her?" Lombardo asked.
The officer replied, "She's detained."
Next in the footage, the Conroe ISD officer steps aside to call the Montgomery County District Attorney's office to discuss filing an Assault on a Public Servant charge which he says happened back in the classroom before the officers arrived and before body camera videos are rolling.
"She assaulted a teacher, slammed her into the wall caused a little laceration on her forearm," he alleges in the conversation with the DA's office on his cell phone. The charge is accepted.
Lombardo goes up the window of the squad car and tries to explain to McKenna what has happened to her while she sits in the back seat of the car. He eventually sees her driven away.
Staring at the video as he watched it with the I-Team, Lombardo says he assumed, at that point in time that McKenna had assaulted an administrator.
But, everything changed one week later when he obtained and watched the body cam videos from the school.
"My anger turned to rage," said Lombardo.
Dad reacts to body cams
The Lombardo family was able to watch the officers place handcuffs on McKenna just outside the restroom.
They say they were horrified for several reasons.
They say the arrest should have never happened because of the "No Kids in Cuffs" law passed in Texas last year.
The law, passed following our I-Team investigations, states that a peace officer "…may not restrain a student enrolled in fifth grade or below unless the student poses a serious risk of harm to the student or another person."
In McKenna's case, her father agrees that McKenna was being difficult, but he argues that the body camera footage, which starts after the initial allegations that led to the officer's arrival in the first place, shows she was not posing any immediate threat to anyone at the time she was handcuffed.
But several exchanges between the officer and two teachers heard on the body camera videos is what was even more upsetting to him.
TEACHER #2: "She assaulted you."
TEACHER #1: "She did assault me. I am bleeding."
OFFICER: "You are bleeding."
TEACHER #1: "No, she pinned me against the door. She blocked the door and my arm happened to be there."
OFFICER: "…that's up to you with the arm. If you want to do something with that? That's totally your call."
TEACHER #1: "I mean if it will help."
Lombardo believes the officers repeatedly put pressure on the teachers as they discussed whether charges should be filed against McKenna.
Just outside the office after McKenna has been handcuffed, the body cameras capture this conversation…
OFFICER: "Did you think about that?"
TEACHER #1: "I feel silly doing that."
OFFICER: "I've seen way less. …I've seen way less."
TEACHER #1: "So, what would the process be?"
OFFICER: "Well, she's in handcuffs already, so she's going to juvenile. So, she just gets a charge with assault, assault on a public servant. Take a statement from you and two photographs."
TEACHER #1: "…even if it was just like I was in the way?"
OFFICER: "Oh yeah, it don't matter."
"They were doing whatever they could in order to solicit a felony charge against a 10-year-old. It's just, it's sick. I mean a special needs 10- 10-year-old," said Lombardo listening to the video.
Two assault charges
Three days after the arrest, a second staff member filed another Assault on a Public Servant charge starting during the bathroom incident, which is seen on body cam videos. According to the charge, McKenna "…slammed her hands and body into the dispenser" injuring the woman's hand.
The police report states the second teacher said, "I yelped because it hurt…"
Looking at the video of the incident, Lombardo says, "I didn't hear her yelp. …I didn't hear any injuries that would have been consistent with what was depicted in the police report to include all the photographs that we have on a wrist and everything else."
The police report includes photos of the second teacher with a soft, cast-like stabilizing wrist support around her wrist and thumb.
The report also includes photos of a small laceration on the first teacher's arm. She says this happened during the classroom incident which originally prompted the call to officers.
Senator and advocacy group watch body cams
The I-Team took the videos to state Senator Royce West, D-Dallas, who authored the "No Kids in Cuffs" law.
"The school should have determined whether there was an alternative to putting a fifth grader, a 10-year-old, in handcuffs."
West further emphasized, based on the video evidence, that McKenna was not posing a danger to herself or anyone else at the time she was handcuffed, and he shared the same concerns Lombardo's father had.
"…it appears as so, based on looking at the video, the justification was made up after the fact."
The Senator asked us to let the video continue to roll so he could listen more closely to the conversations between the officer and teachers.
"It appears, though, if I was the lawyer on the case, it was she was being urged to do it by the police officer to say that she was assaulted when she said, 'I feel real silly about this.'"
The Minerat Foundation, a community advocacy group that led the charge in Austin to have the "No Kids in Cuff" passed, also expressed disappointment in how the situation was handled.
Director Shariq Ghani said, "What really perturbed me was a teacher, who was supposed to be a best friend or at least a friend of their student, was being pressured… The pressure we saw came from the officer."
In another conversation heard on the body cam videos, the officer discusses the alleged assault.
OFFICER: "Sounds like assault of a public official."
TEACHER: "Want to do it? I mean I will if it will help?
"You can tell the teacher didn't want to be involved … but she was put into a pretty bad situation and the teacher had to make a call that may not have been the right call to make," said Ghani.
Ghani believes the behavior contradicts the mission of school police officers.
"They want to be seen as someone that the children can lean on behavior in the example that this really contradicts what we know from school police officers and school associations. It goes counter to the values, and it was very disappointing to see," said Ghani.
Ghani and West said the situation proves more laws may be needed and/or more work may needed to clarify the law in place.
"The reality is it shows that we have some more work we need to do. I mean, has a police officer been trained in terms of what they should or should not be doing in situations like this? I don't know. I would assume that they have. But if they haven't, then there needs to be at least a module in their training," said West. "They should have thought through exactly what would be appropriate for her as opposed to putting in handcuffs, taking her to juvenile."
West said he admitted he was "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" the situation. He asked the I-Team to follow up with him on McKenna's case and to alert him of other similar cases as he monitors the legislation.
"We need to look at situations like this as we get ready to go back to the next legislative session. And I would encourage [reporting], if there are other examples where we can actually see what's going on. That's why I put, we put, body cameras in the law because we could see what was going on right there," said West.
"I don't want it to happen to anyone else." — McKenna
West and the Minerat Foundation have repeatedly said the purpose of the "No Kids in Cuffs Law" is to prevent the short- and long-term impacts of handcuffing a young child.
McKenna's family allowed the I-Team to ask her.
"I'm worried because I don't want it to happen to anybody else," she said. "Younger than me. Older than me. I know I was being, like, bad, and I wasn't listening to the teacher, but I didn't think I was going to get arrested."
In her words, McKenna explained the initial incident that caused the administration to contact Conroe ISD Police. McKenna said it started as a verbal argument with a friend in the classroom. McKenna said she blocked the door and her teacher's arm got in the way, but she says she did not intentionally hurt anyone.
McKenna continued to admit she is difficult at school. She said she knew she wasn't behaving that day, and the video proved it.
She also said she had repeatedly had trouble at school with friends and teachers, and she wished she had talked to her parents about it sooner.
CBS data on handcuffing/restraints of children
The I-Team first began digging into these cases in November 2022.
The CBS Data Team data learned that children with disabilities nationwide are arrested at four times the rate of non-disabled children.
In Texas, children with disabilities and minority children are arrested at higher rates than white and non-disabled children.
After learning about this case, the CBS Data Team dove back into the numbers looking specifically at this school and restraint data at this school.
In Texas, in 2020-21, about 4% of the students with disabilities at Cryar Intermediate were restrained.
Statewide, less than half a percent of all students with disabilities were restrained.
The CBS Data Team called that a "stark" difference.
Update on charges
From May to July, McKenna faced two assaults on public servant charges in Montgomery County.
On July 31, Lombardo told the I-Team those charges were dropped.
Lombardo said Montgomery County officials allowed the family to do a Zoom call rather than bring McKenna to an intake hearing to discuss the charges in person.
Via the teleconference hearing, Lombardo says a Montgomery County probation officer listened carefully to him and his concerns.
The County dropped the charges following the hearing.
Conroe ISD Police and District responses
In covering these cases, the I-Team learned how dangerous and difficult the classroom can be. Many teachers and administrators have discussed the struggles they face which often led to handcuffing and restraints.
To find out more about what may not be seen on the body cam video, we repeatedly reached out to Conroe ISD and the Conroe ISD Police Chief.
The I-Team also asked Conroe ISD for its policies on arresting and restraining which West asked the I-Team to request.
The school district did not provide the policy.
A spokesperson sent the I-Team a statement stating it could not comment due to "student privacy laws."
Conroe ISD Police have not responded to our requests.