Case Update: former Exceptional Student Education teacher pleads no contest to false imprisonment charge

Apr 8

April 8, 2025

Case #: 2024-000898

Monday, Carina Chindamo, the former G.D. Rogers Garden-Bullock Elementary School Exceptional Student Education (ESE) teacher arrested in 2024 for false imprisonment of a seven-year-old, non-verbal student, pleaded no contest to the charge, which is a third-degree felony.

On February 5, 2024, detectives initiated an investigation into Chindamo and two school aides, Taylor Internicola and Hydalmy Ortiz, after the school’s playground security camera video recorded one or more of the women - on at least four occasions - tying the wrists of the boy with a nylon walking rope, a device used to teach students to walk in line. The video showed the women securing the rope to a chair and then sitting in the chair, appearing to use their weight to keep the child from getting free.

A Manatee County judge sentenced Chindamo to six months of community control, 12 months of probation, and 50 hours of public service. The judge also ordered Chindamo to have no contact with the victim, no unsupervised contact with any child under the age of 13, and no supervision of children under the age of 18.

Internicola and Ortiz have court dates scheduled for April 30, 2025.