"I'm trying to scare this kid straight. I would not be doing my job if I were not trying to get him on the right path," Thurgood Marshall Academy Principal Sam Morgan told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, adding the child "has been a holy terror."

Aroni Rucker said she had been contacted by the school once a week about her son's behavioral problems, but "He didn't do anything to deserve to be handcuffed," said insisted. He is only five. Suspend him or do whatever, but you don't handcuff him."

 Rucker has since withdrawn both of her sons from the school.