Updated at 2:50 p.m. Thursday: Revised to include additional information from the district.

An elementary school teacher is no longer employed by the Garland school district in the wake of a police investigation into allegations of unlawful restraint of a student in a pre-kindergarten classroom.

Police announced their investigation into a classroom at Shorehaven Elementary School on Friday. This week, Lt. Pedro Barineau said detectives were questioning school officials and parents.

"The investigation is early and detectives are interviewing school staff and witnesses to determine if a crime has been committed," Barineau, a police spokesman, said Wednesday. "It is likely that once the detective gathers all the information on the case, it will be referred to the grand jury."

Four staff members — two teachers and two aides assigned to that classroom — were placed on leave in connection with the investigation, a district spokeswoman said in a statement. One of the teachers is no longer with the district, though the spokeswoman said she could not comment on whether the person resigned or was terminated.

Officials with Garland ISD went to police about the allegations Jan. 8, Barineau said. Police offered no details about what the allegations entail, except that a teacher restrained a student with "something other than hands," Barineau said.

But parents haven’t been told what’s being investigated, said Alina Leal, whose 4-year-old son was in the classroom the allegations involve. She has since pulled her son out of the school and told administrators he won’t be coming back.

Leal said her son Marshall was part of a pre-K classroom in which about half of the students have special needs. Students in the class range from 3 to 5 years old, she said.

Marshall has autism and is nonverbal, Leal said.

“I would have never known if they were doing anything mean to him,” she said. “That’s literally my biggest fear.”

She said she received a recorded message from the school Jan. 8 saying that Marshall’s teachers were no longer going to be in the classroom, and that the class would have substitutes instead.

The next day, she got another message inviting her to come to a meet-the-teacher night on Monday, Leal said.

On Friday, she learned why her son’s teachers had been replaced when her grandmother called her in tears to tell her about a news story she watched about the police investigation at Shorehaven.

Leal said she met with the principal and other school officials at Shorehaven on Monday, trying to get answers about what went on in her son’s classroom.

She said the administrators repeatedly told her they couldn’t say anything about the ongoing investigation. They told her a camera has been installed in the classroom the investigation centers on since the allegations arose.

Lately, Marshall has been more scared of the dark, Leal said. Since news of the allegations — including one parent who told KTVT-TV (Channel 11) she had been told by the district that children were being locked in dark closets, strapped to chairs and shown scary clown masks as a form of discipline — Leal has worried her son's fear might be a product of his school environment.

“Well, did they do something to him?” she said. “He can’t tell me. I feel like no one’s going to really tell me.”

Garland ISD said in a statement that school officials let parents know that staff in that classroom have been replaced with a new teacher and support staff. Campus and district staff contacted parents by phone and in face-to-face meetings about the allegations since the day the district contacted police, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

“Whenever there is an issue that involves the safety and security of students, we take it very seriously and respond promptly. There were allegations made about staff in one classroom at Shorehaven Elementary,” the statement read in part.

The district declined to answer questions about the nature of the allegations, as well as when and how the district was made aware of them.

In a letter to parents on Tuesday, Superintendent Ricardo López told parents that while he could not discuss details of the ongoing investigation, district officials acted quickly to place the staff in that classroom on leave and reported the allegations to police and Child Protective Services.

"In closing, let me say that we have an opportunity," López wrote in the letter. "We stand in a place where we see there are changes to be made, and I am giving you my personal commitment to creating that change."

Anyone who wants to share information with police about the case can call Garland police’s nonemergency number at 972-485-4840, Barineau said.