A 37-year-old Brooklyn mom and pediatric nurse was arrested for allegedly whipping her child with an extension cord after cops found the 9-year-old boy wandering the streets after midnight — but family members claim the woman was merely disciplining her son for stealing, cops and relatives said Wednesday.
Tsahay Nurse is facing second-degree assault charges after cops found the boy by himself at Flatbush and Snyder Aves. in Flatbush at 12:38 a.m. Tuesday, cops said. It’s Nurse’s first arrest, according to police.
The child, who had “multiple lacerations” on both his arms, according to police, told officers that he had run away from home because Nurse had whipped him with an extension cord.
The boy also said Nurse punched him in the chest and choked him, cops said.
Nurse’s relatives refuted these claims on Wednesday, calling the 9-year-old a “spoiled” child that his mother had to discipline for stealing a classmate’s ski mask on Tuesday afternoon.
“She’s a single mother who is disciplining her kids because he did something that he wasn’t supposed to do,” the child’s great-aunt, Jennifer Braithwaite, told the Daily News. “Let me tell you, he is 9 years old and if you don’t discipline him now, he will be with the cops when he’s 14 or 15, or he will be buried. It’s one of the two.”
At around the time the child was found wandering the streets, Nurse, who lives about five blocks away, called 911 reporting her son missing. Braithwaite said the family had been looking for the child for about two hours before Nurse called the cops.
Responding officers took Nurse to Flatbush Ave., where she identified the child as her son. After hearing the boy’s claims, she was taken into custody on suspicion of child abuse.
Braithwaite said the cops jumped the gun, arresting Nurse on her son’s word. The child had never been disciplined before and is well-treated, she said.
“The mother spanked his ass,” Braithwaite admitted. “[But] how can the cops can take a statement from a 9-year-old and the parent is not present? Tell me how they could do that? Because if I remember the law, they’re not supposed to talk to him without a parent present.”
Nurse is a practicing pediatric nurse, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The child, who is not being named by this paper, was taken to University Hospital at Downstate for observation. His father went with him, cops said.
Relatives said the boy was with two friends Tuesday afternoon when one of them offered to give Nurse’s son $30 to steal a classmate’s ski mask. Her son plucked it off the child’s head and ran off with it.
The victim told his parents, who approached Nurse and the child’s father, demanding the ski mask be returned.
Nurse’s son ultimately confessed, Braithwaite said. Nurse told her son to get a belt from his grandmother, but the grandmother wouldn’t give her one.
The mom then took her child into her room and “flogged” him, relatives said, but they didn’t know what was used. Relatives said the child was never choked or punched.
“She never hit him before — ever,” Braithwaite said, outraged that Nurse was so quickly arrested.
“I am pissed,” she said. “I am so mad about it.”
Kim Nurse, the child’s grandmother, said the boy ran out of the house after he was disciplined.
“That’s when we started looking for him,” the grandmother said. “When it comes to flogging or physical discipline, he never had that before, so he got scared.”
The grandmother said the child was “following bad company” at his school.
Cops also charged Nurse with strangulation, child abandonment, criminal obstruction of breathing, harassment and disorderly conduct, cops said.
Her arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court was pending Wednesday.
