By NICK VLAHOS
For The Weekly Post
PRINCEVILLE – Local school-district personnel are accused of restraining 2-year-old twins for more than an hour while in daycare, a violation of state administrative law.
The twins’ mother is the district’s former school resource officer. The Peoria County Sheriff’s Office reassigned her following a subsequent, unrelated daycare incident.
A lawsuit filed Jan. 20 in Peoria County Circuit Court on behalf of Eric and Crystal Strauss claims Princeville School District daycare personnel placed the twins in belted chairs as a response to alleged behavior problems.
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services regulations limit such restrictions to one minute per year of age. But the lawsuit alleges the Strauss twins, who were 2 at the time, were restrained regularly for spans of between eight and 100 minutes.
The lawsuit identified the twins by their initials. They attended Princeville daycare from October 2024 until Jan. 30, 2025.
“You can’t put a restraint on somebody and put them in a timeout for 10, 20, 30, 40 minutes,” said the Strausses’ attorney, Peoria Heights-based Sharbel Rantisi. “Their response to the childrens’ misbehavior was to put them in these chairs. They couldn’t keep the kids from acting up, and this was their way of controlling that.”
A case-management conference in front of Circuit Court Judge Timothy Cusack is set for June 26.
The school district was named in the lawsuit. So were Princeville Superintendent Tony Shinall, Migrant/Head Start Coordinator Luisa Horton-Meza and former daycare teachers Lindsay Brumley and Breckon Clark. The Strausses are seeking at least $50,000 in damages.
“At this time, the district will not comment on pending litigation,” Shinall said in a text message to The Weekly Post.
Crystal Strauss was the Princeville school resource officer for six years until she was removed Jan. 2 from that job. According to Peoria County Sheriff Chris Watkins, Strauss was reassigned to patrol following an internal investigation regarding alleged policy violations.
That move appears connected to an incident in late October 2025 in which Shinall was accused of lifting a 4-year-old preschooler for disciplinary reasons. Investigations by the Illinois State Police and DCFS cleared Shinall of wrongdoing, according to School Board President Amy Davis.
Crystal Strauss resigned from the sheriff’s office, effective Feb. 6. In a telephone interview with The Weekly Post, Strauss expressed disappointment about her reassignment. According to her, the Princeville community raised money for her fertility treatments, among other acts of appreciation.
“That community has treated me so well,” Strauss said. “They’ve always just been so kind and wonderful. I would do anything for that school.”
Eric Strauss is a sheriff’s-office lieutenant. According to Rantisi, the Strausses were unaware of their children being restrained until Jan. 29, 2025, when Eric Strauss visited the daycare facility. At the time, it was in the same building as the school-district offices.
“They found out about it because Eric Strauss happened to walk in and see it,” Rantisi said.
Security video corroborates the Strausses’ claims, according to Rantisi. He said Horton-Mesa is seen in at least one of the videos he obtained.
“She was aware of it and didn’t put a stop to it,” Rantisi said.
In February 2025, the School Board accepted the resignations of Brumley and Clark. No reason was given publicly. The lawsuit accuses Brumley and Clark of preventing the twins from leaving their restraining chairs. It also accuses all the defendants of indifference to or conscious disregard for both children.
