NEW YORK, March 31 (UPI) -- Hanging a 5-year-old child by a belt loop turns out to be neither amusing nor cheap -- all to the apparent surprise of the New York music teacher who did it. Jason Schoenberger www.timberlandoutlet.eu, 24, told police he was playing a prank on a colleague at Public School 279 when he attached a 5-year-old boy to a coat hook by his belt loop, nearly 5 feet off the floor, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday. Kindergarten teacher Rayna Cohen Monster Turbine, who found the terrified child in a closet last Thursday, dangling by his belt loop Beats By Dr. Dre Pro, reported it to the principal, who called police. Schoenberger was charged with endangering the welfare of a child -- a misdemeanor that could land him at Rikers Island for a year. And as of Tuesday the district faces a $5 million lawsuit by the boys' parents. "To hang a 5-year-old boy by his belt loop in a closet is unconscionable," the lawyer for the boy's parents said. "I would never do this to someone else's child," said the boy's father, who teaches math at an alternative high school in Manhattan.

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