Photo: Anari Ormond
At around 12:22 p.m. on Tuesday, Anari Ormond, 23, got a text no parent wants to receive.
The message was from the owner of J&A Nursery in Newark, asking Ormond to give the center a call on her lunch break.
Ormond’s little girl Zuri Camara had been a student at the daycare since October.
Ormond tells PEOPLE that she called the nursery immediately and was told that Zuri had been left “unattended around a 2-year-old boy.”
“She said in that time period of being unattended the boy ‘bit Zuri 3 times in the stomach,'” Ormond says.
After hanging up the phone, Ormond, a preschool teacher and recent Howard University graduate, says she rushed to the daycare — which was just a 17-minute drive away.
“When I arrived I was stopped at the door and basically braced for whatever I was getting ready to see,” Ormond says.
Zuri.Anari Ormond
That’s when she says the owner told her the news — and Ormond learned there was more to the story.
The owner of the nursery did not respond to numerous requests from PEOPLE for comment.
“[The owner] began a story saying she went upstairs to get Neosporin and fell down the steps while holding my daughter and she was severely bruised,” Ormond explains.
At this point, Ormond has not yet seen her daughter, so she rushed past the daycare owner to find her child’s entire face “red, bruised, swollen and scratched.”
Ormond says Zuri also had scratches “on her right foot and hand.”
Ormond promptly left the center and took Zuri to St. Barnabas Hospital.
“We went straight to the hospital. They did a CT scan of her head immediately just to make sure there was no head trauma. There was no internal bleeding,” Ormond explains adding that the doctor ruled it as “mild concussion” and sent her home with antibiotics.
“On the X-ray, nothing showed up and they did an X-ray of her leg, but couldn’t see any fractures but that may have been because her bones are so tiny,” Ormond says the doctor told her.
After leaving the hospital, Ormond headed to the police station. She explains she took photos of Zuri’s injuries, which show marks on her face, legs and what appears to be bite marks on her stomach.
The Newark Police Department did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
The New Jersey Department of Children and Families has since released a statement.
Anari Ormond and her daughter Zuri.Anari Ormond
More than anything, Ormond wants the center to be shut down so that no parent has to experience what she’s gone through.
“I literally can’t sleep or eat and probably won’t until my daughter receives justice,” Ormondwroteon social media.
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go tohttp://www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
source: people.com
