Library employee on leave following discrimination allegations

A son much too young to understand the enormity of these allegations, but mom and dad do, and they say they're hurt. Now, the video you're about to see has more than 4 million views on TikTok alone. It shows 17-month-old Messiah Whitaker, that's right there in the red circle, that's the little boy, at an outdoor puppet show put on by the Darien Public Library back on October 3rd. The puppeteer, who's holding the green puppet, can be seen interacting with white children and seems to ignore Messiah the family says this happened at least twice and at one point the woman appeared to put the puppet away which prompted them to leave the child's father says he then just happened to look back over his shoulder only to see that she had brought the puppet back out and then resumed engaging with the other children i feel like my son he was waiting patiently in a video you can see at a certain point he didn't wait for his turn just like all the other kids um a lot of people was telling us why didn't we go up to her to try to get her attention nobody else was doing that so why why we have to put more effort in just to try to get her attention you know what i mean in a statement to Fox 5 from the library it reads in part Darien Library takes these allegations seriously as we do our commitment to being a welcoming inclusive and safe space for every patron especially our youngest patrons and their families and caregivers we've been very carefully reviewing everything that occurred leading up to and following the event and have been and have again been in direct contact with the family. We ask our community for patience as we take the necessary steps to investigate. The library goes on to say that the puppeteer is one of its librarians. She has been placed on administrative leave during this investigation. The Norwalk NAACP is also investigating and now Darien PD is involved because of the threats against the library. The employee and the Whitaker family says that they have also been dealing with hate rhetoric.