Cops: Tutor Arrested With 3 Kids in Trunk

Tenn. woman charged with reckless endangerment
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 19, 2016 1:01 AM CST
Cops: Tutor Arrested With 3 Kids in Trunk
Andria James' booking photo.   (Rutherford County Sheriff's Office via DNJ)

The answer to "How do you fit nine kids in a car?" is not "six in the cab and three in the trunk," Tennessee cops more or less informed a Nashville-area tutor after arresting her at a gas station Sunday evening. Police say that after a call from a concerned citizen, they found that Andria Desha James had three children, all 9 or 10 years old, in the trunk of her Chevy Malibu, reports the Daily News Journal. She was charged with reckless endangerment, and parents were called to come and collect the children, who are all believed to be her students. A Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools spokesman tells the DNJ that James is a part-time tutor and has been suspended during the investigation.

The "acts she is accused of are completely inappropriate for an educator entrusted with caring for students," the spokesman says. James, who was released on bail early Monday, tells WKRN that she never had nine children in her car and it is a "complete and utter lie" that any of them were in the trunk. "All of them never got into the trunk; there was plenty of room, those kids and seat belts," she says. A police spokesman, however, tells the station that surveillance video from the gas station shows three children getting out of the trunk after James pulled up to a gas pump. (Last year, a childcare worker in Ohio was charged with child endangerment after accidentally dropping her 2-year-old son into a cheetah pit.)

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