Photo: Sumter County Sheriff’s Office
The video posted to Facebook raised alarms among those who saw it.
It captures a woman laughing while pouring water on a 9-month-old girl asleep in her crib. The infant coughs, and seconds later, another splash of water pours on the child’s nose, leading to more coughs and crying.
“Payback for waking me up all kinda times of [the] night,” the woman, 33-year-old Caitlin Alyse Hardy, wrote in a post that accompanied the video posted to her Facebook page, Sumter County, South Carolina, Sheriff Anthony Dennis tells PEOPLE.
Several people who spotted it alerted the sheriff’s office with concerns, sending the link to the office’s website and to the sheriff personally, he says.
“We didn’t take it as a joke or some type of game she was playing with a 9-month-old,” he says. “We wanted to make sure the child was okay.”
She was. But on Wednesday, authorities arrested Hardy on a charge of cruelty to children for the January 29 incident “after viewing [the] disturbing images,” the sheriff’s officesaid in a news releaseposted to Facebook.
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“Hardy did pour a bottle of water on a 9-month-old female infant while the infant was sleeping,” the statement alleges. “After being poured with water the second time, the infant woke up coughing. Hardy video recorded the incident and posted it on her Facebook page.”
PEOPLE was unable to reach Hardy, and it was unclear whether she had obtained an attorney. She did not have a defense lawyer with her at her bond hearing, says the sheriff.
In a written statement, he added: “The charge against this defendant will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
source: people.com
