Mum pretended to be daughter at middle school - and even sat in classes
A Texas woman who disguised herself as her daughter before going to school for a day has been found guilty of criminal trespassing.
Casey Garcia, 33, claims she was trying to make a statement about school safety when she snuck into Ann M. Garcia-Enriquez Middle School for a day, sat in lessons, and ate lunch in the canteen. The mother has now been sentenced to six months of probation in El Paso County criminal court, given a $700 probated fine and must complete 100 hours of community service.
The video, uploaded on YouTube in June 2021, showed Garcia going as far as to dye her hair and tan her skin in order to resemble her daughter Julie, who was 13 at the time. “Do I look like a seventh grader? No? Cool, awesome,” she says before heading into the school.
READ MORE:
With a face mask helping to protect her identity, Garcia eats lunch in the cafeteria, poses in a bathroom mirror and attends all her daughter’s classes - and at one point her teacher even calls her by her daughter’s name. But the mum faced backlash online before disabling the comments and filming a response to explain she was making a statement about student safety.
Nursery apologises after child with Down's syndrome ‘treated less favourably’
Garcia went to the cafeteria to eat lunch alone
“Do I look like a seventh grader?" she asked as she headed into school“We need better security at our schools, this is what I tried to prove, and I don't mean to be curt but I kind of feel like I proved it,” Garcia said. But this didn’t prevent her legal woes and she was arrested by El Paso County Sheriff's Office deputies on June 4, being released on $7,808 bond.
An affidavit stated that Garcia started recording at about 8.45am outside the school, before she signed in with her daughter’s name and ID number. Garcia gave her daughter’s name when asked to identify herself in one of the classes.
But she was exposed when she asked for help with a topic the class had already covered, and when a teacher confronted her she confessed she was the mother of a student and partaking in a “social experiment”. She was asked to go to the principal’s office, where she explained her actions to the principal before leaving.
She went to the bathroom and posed in the mirrorGarcia was charged with tampering with government records for allegedly forging her daughter’s signature, a charge later dropped by the El Paso County district attorney’s office. She admitted to entering her daughter’s school but pleaded not guilty to criminal trespassing, requesting a jury trial.
Theresa Caballero, representing Garcia, told the Washington Post she was glad her client had escaped jail time - but was disappointed with the conviction at all. “Clearly, trespassing on school grounds - and nobody was harmed by it - is less harmful than the harm you're trying to avoid, which is a school shooting.”
San Elizario Independent School District Superintendent Jeannie Mesa-Chavez said in a statement after Garcia’s arrest: “While there was a breach in security by an individual associated as a parent with the school… we want to assure you that our security measures are being reviewed and evaluated.”
The moment Garcia was arrested was also filmed and posted. “I'm just letting you know that I am recording,” she said. “I posed as a seventh grader, and it went viral, and now the superintendent's pissed. I said I wasn't going to go back on school grounds so...he figured it out.” She then said to the camera: “He got his ego destroyed - well, he wants to destroy mine. That is okay.”
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
