(ABCNEWS) — The Texas judge who jailed an 11th-grade honor student for missing too much school unfairly punished the teen who works two jobs to support her siblings, one of her employers says.
"I can understand if a child is staying out of school, running around, a bad kid, getting into trouble, taking drugs," Mary Elliot, Diane Tran's boss at her weekend job, told ABC News this weekend. "I can understand why he would slap them into jail for 24 hours. But Diane doesn't do that. All she does is work and go to school."
Tran, 17, had already been warned not to miss any more time at her Houston-area school, but when Judge Lanny Moriarty heard she'd skipped again, he sent her to jail for 24 hours Wednesday, according to KHOU 11 News.