A photographer was escorted off the campus of an elementary school in Virginia after making inappropriate comments to students. Local news station WTKR reached out to Chittum Elementary School Principal Bridget Outlaw about a Facebook post made by a parent who said the photographer asked her son: “Can I eat your soul?“
Outlaw confirmed the incident and said that she notified parents in an email about what happened.
“Once reported, school administration immediately addressed the issue, and this individual was escorted off of school property,” Outlaw said. “Parents of students who reported the concern were notified.”
One parent, Rachel Fjeld, spoke to WTKR and provided additional details about her son’s interaction with the photographer.
“She asked him, ‘Can I steal your identity?’ His response was just, ‘no.’ Her next question was, ‘Can I eat your soul?’ And, you know, when he was expressing it to us, he was crying, he was very upset, and he said ‘no, no,” Fjeld said.
“Her next question was, ‘Well, then what can I eat?’ He told me he said, ‘Mommy, I didn’t know what to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind was, ‘You can have noodles, you can eat noodles,” and her response was, ‘Demons don’t eat noodles,'” she explained.
The photographer was not named, but the news station reported that she worked Lifetouch, which is owned by Shutterfly. Lifetouch told WTKR that they have since fired the photographer and launched an internal investigation into the incident.
“At Lifetouch, our number one priority is the safety of every student we photograph,” the company said in a statement. “We have numerous policies and procedures in place to ensure that safety, including training and background checks on all of our photographers. We take any allegation about a photographer very seriously, and are conducting a thorough internal investigation. In the meantime, the employee in question has been removed from all photography duties.”
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