"Felony is appropriate": Parents call for jail time as Mississippi daycare workers are charged for scaring children with Halloween masks

A Halloween prank at a Mississippi daycare took a wrong turn when young children were scared by staff members dressed in scary masks. In a viral video, staff members of the Lil’ Blessings Child Care & Learning Center were seen laughing and scaring the crying children.

Days later, parents of traumatized children have come forward to share the experiences their children were forced to suffer at the hands of the daycare staffers. They are of the opinion that the people responsible for terrorizing their young kids should be punished for their actions.

Katelyn Johnson, whose two-year-old was at the Mississippi daycare at the time of the incident, told TMZ that her child was traumatized by the prank. The boy, who was too young to express his emotions, allegedly had trouble falling asleep after the scare and was also regressing in his potty training. She said:

"The Mississippi daycare workers who put on scary masks to frighten the children deserve harsh punishment for the pranks."

TMZ further reported that the parents wish for felony child abuse charges to be levied against the staffers seen in the video.

Katelyn Johnson added that she wanted the four women in question to serve a sentence of 6 to 12 months in social work. While Johnson herself has not considered suing the daycare workers, other parents have asked for them to be charged for their actions.

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What did workers at a Mississippi daycare do? Four women were fired after a video of a prank went viral

Disciplinary action has been taken against four former employees of the Lil' Blessings Child Care & Learning Center in Mississippi. They were fired following a cruel Halloween prank that left a group of children traumatized.

A video of the incident, recorded by a staff member, went viral on the internet and led to a huge amount of outrage. A worker dressed in a mask reminiscent of the classic horror film Scream can be seen scaring and roaring at the children, who soon begin wailing and calling out for their parents.

In a Facebook post, the worker who recorded the incident at the daycare in Mississippi and posted it on social media, said:

"I'm just now getting the proof I needed to help get those people out of that daycare and away from those children...Once the cops go there, what are they going to do? Arrest without any proof. The cameras in that daycare do not record so there was no going back and checking."

According to the Daily Mail, one of the workers denied the allegations and said that she was not a child abuser. Instead, she was asked to wear the mask and scare the young children by the teachers present at the center. In a Facebook video, she defended her actions and said:

"But what you all didn’t see was after I had left the room, I took it off and I went back into the classroom… and I said, "CeeCee got the monster. It’s not coming back.’ And they would hug me. I’ve known those kids their whole life. It wasn’t meant to harm anybody and it wasn’t ill-intentioned."

The Monroe County Sheriff's Office identified the workers in question as Sierra McCandless, Oci-Anna Kilburn, Jennifer Newman, Shyenne Shelton and Traci Hutson.