Sandy MaloneLong Island, NY – A Long Island biology teacher could face prison time for injecting a 17-year-old boy with the Covid vaccine at her home without his parents’ authorization (video below).
The Nassau County Police Department said in a press release that the incident occurred at the Summit Avenue home of 54-year-old Laura Russo, a teacher at Herricks High School.
A cell phone video of the incident showed a teenager sitting on a stool at what appeared to be a kitchen counter.
The video showed Russo swabbed the boy’s arm with alcohol before she moved to the end of the counter to prepare the shot.
“Yeah, there you go, at-home vaccine!” another boy declared from off camera.
Then Russo joked about giving the boy “a tiny needle,” the video showed.
It appeared in the video as though everyone was aware they were being filmed.
But then the 17 year old featured in the video went home and told his mother that Russo had given him the shot, WABC reported.
The boy’s mother called the police and reported what had happened, NBC News reported.
“The mother had not given permission or authority to have her son injected with a Covid vaccine,” Nassau County police said.
Russo was arrested in Sea Cliff on New Year’s Eve, NBC News reported.
“After an investigation was conducted, it was discovered that defendant Laura Parker Russo is not a medical professional or authorized to administer vaccines and was placed under arrest without incident,” the police department’s press release read.
The biology teacher was charged with unauthorized practice of a profession under New York State Education Law, NBC News reported.
Police said she was taken into custody without incident.
If convicted, Russo is facing up to four years in prison, according WABC.
She is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 21, The Washington Post reported.
The Nassau County School District said that Russo had been re-assigned out of the classroom pending the outcome of the case, NBC News reported.
However, the school district stressed that the shot had not been administered on school property and the incident was not tied to the school.
“The individual in question is a district employee who has been removed from the classroom and reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation,” the Nassau County School District said in a statement.
It wasn’t known which vaccine Russo administered to the teen, nor where she obtained it, The Washington Post reported.
Thus far, the Pfizer-BioNTech is the only Covid vaccine approved for people under the age of 18.
Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease expert at the University of California at San Francisco, said that administering the vaccine takes special training, The Washington Post reported.
Gandhi said the mRNA vaccines need ultra-cold temperatures and specialized handling.
She said it is “quite tricky” to do it properly so the mRNA technology does not break down, according to The Washington Post.
Gandhi said the Pfizer vaccine has to be thawed, mixed with a specific amount of saline for injection, and administered within short timeframe.
“There are very certain specific procedures to administer it. That’s my concern about someone who is not trained giving a vaccine to a person,” the infectious disease expert told The Washington Post.
Watch the incident unfold in the video below:
“There you go, at home vaccine”. Police have arrested a Long Island mother for illegally giving a 17 year old boy a shot of Covid vaccine in her home. And there’s video….Only on @NBCNewYork #nbc4ny pic.twitter.com/KpG5vAQaDT
— Pei-Sze Cheng (@PeiSzeCheng4NY) January 3, 2022
Holly Matkin
