Preschool Teachers Charged After Setting Up Kiddy Fight Club

ST. LOUIS, MO — Two teachers at a St. Louis preschool have been charged with endangering the welfare of children in their care after Fox 2 published a video last week of the women setting up a kiddy fight club.

Twenty-two year old Tena Dailey and 28-year-old Mickala Guliford said they did it to entertain the kids after the facility's heater broke. Both teachers lost their jobs, but it took almost two years for prosecutors to bring charges.

The video, recorded by a ten-year-old, shows young children violently beating each other with foam fists as their teachers cheer them on. Court documents say Dailey and Guliford encouraged the children to fight for more than half an hour. At one point, other preschoolers try to intervene as a child pins another to the ground, but teachers never do.

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The fights only stopped, mother Nicole Merseal said, when her son texted her video of a child beating his younger brother — she called the preschool's director to intervene.

"He doesn't understand why his friends were fighting him — why he was beaten up by his best friends," she told the television station.

Two teachers were fired, but prosecutors initially declined to press charges. Though she has since chosen a different daycare for her children, Merseal said she still wants the teachers and the preschool held accountable.

"I don't want this to happen to any other child," she told Fox 2.

State investigators have documented 26 other incidents at the preschool since 2016, including teachers cursing at preschoolers, flicking them and pushing them to the ground.

As in every case, charges are merely accusations, not proof of guilt.

Read more from Fox 2.

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