PORT ORCHARD, Wash. – The state Department of Early Learning has suspended the day care center license of a 57-year-old woman in Kitsap County after sheriff's say she put a 4-year-old boy in her car trunk and drove about a third of a mile.
No charges have been filed against Linda Clarke, owner of Grandma Linda's Home Daycare, Kitsap County Sheriff's deputy Scott Wilson said. However, a report was sent to prosecutors, and the licensing division of the Department of Early Learning will conduct an investigation, The Kitsap Sun reported.
Clarke told a deputy she put Nicholas Wickstrom into the trunk of her 1994 Chrysler Concorde on Tuesday after he bit another child and tried to shut the car door on her hand.
She says she drove about five miles an hour for less than half a mile with him in the trunk. She then told the boy's mother, Linda Hooper, who called the sheriff's office.
The boy's uncle, Robert Brookbank, says the child had been going to the day care for two years, and is happy Clarke's license has been suspended.
"We thought that was a sick and nasty thing that she did," Brookbank told the newspaper.
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