Luiz C.
'I’m now staying home with the kiddos and working part time. You can’t trust anybody,' said Eliana Rantz, who sent her two sons, Izzy and Uriah, to Lightbridge Academy.
She broke the first rule of child care fight club — never talk about it.
But distraught mom Eliana Meira Rantz, 31, is doing just that — dishing about kiddie “fight club” bouts that were being held at the New Jersey child care center where she sent her two tykes last year.
“It’s just quite shocking,” Rantz, of Linden, N.J., told the Daily News Wednesday. “I’m now staying home with the kiddos and working part time. You can’t trust anybody.”
She said she doesn't believe that her sons, Izzy, 3, and Uri, 19 months, were part of toddler tussles at the Lightbridge Academy in Cranford that authorities say were broadcast on Snapchat.
“He’s quite verbal,” Rantz said of Izzy. “I imagine that if he saw anything (like toddlers fighting) he would probably have come home and told me.”
Overall, the staff at the center was very friendly and caring, she added.
On Tuesday, Union County authorities charged two former academy employees, Erica Kenny, 22, and Chanese White, 28, with fourth-degree child abuse for allegedly forcing children to duke it out inside the Khaki Kangaroo and Brown Bear classrooms.
Union County authorities charged two former academy employees, Erica Kenny, 22, and Chanese White, 28, with fourth-degree child abuse for allegedly forcing children to duke it out inside the Khaki Kangaroo and Brown Bear classrooms.
Authorities said the coerced kiddie combat took place on at least one day in August, and Kenny recorded some of it on her phone and sent clips to friends through Snapchat.
In the video, Kenny is heard quoting from the novel and film “Fight Club,” about angry men who beat each other senseless in underground rumbles.
At least a dozen children, all between ages 4 and 6, are seen in the videos, county police said.
Two former Lightbridge staffers who asked not to be named told The News White had a history of problems at the center.
“She was always just a very negative, non-social person,” said one of the ex-staffers, who added that White would often trick the youngsters into hitting each other if one of them misbehaved.
The two fired staffers and school officials did not return calls seeking comment.