Middletown Police threw the book at a parent the other day when she got involved in a fight - and it wasn't a school book.
The police said that Cassandra Cooper and her 10th grade daughter allegedly assaulted another girl. The family said the police account was "as wrong as two left shoes."
Cassandra Cooper, 38, of Middletown, went to her 15-year-old daughter's school, Middletown High School, last Friday, according to police. She wanted to get administrators to isolate her daughter from other kids who had threatened her in instant messages.
Middletown police said when one of those other kids walked by, mother and daughter followed the girl into a stairwell and assaulted her. Then police arrested mom and daughter.
Is this a case study for parental involvement role models?
"I didn't do anything. I did not touch that girl," Cooper said Wednesday afternoon. She was at the school where she is studying to become a certified medical assistant.
"I'm a single parent and all I do is go to school and take care of my kids," she said.
Here's what happened at the school according to the teen-aged daughter, who's also charged with assault. She admitted that she got in a fight with the other girl, who suffered minor facial injuries. She said her mother did not fight. She said that her mother pulled her off the other student and broke up the fight.
"It's just kids being kids," proclaimed Robert Cooper who is Cassandra's father. "My daughter's at the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess you would say."
Cassandra Cooper's parents flew from Orlando to bail her out of jail. They said they hope the case won't ruin their daughter's future.
"I don't believe it will. At least I know it won't because my daughter is not guilty," the elder Cooper said. "She didn't do all this stuff."
Cassandra Cooper was charged with risk of injury to a minor, 2nd degree unlawful restraint, 2nd degree threatening, 1st degree criminal trespass, and 3rd degree conspiracy to commit assault.
