WAYCROSS, Ga. -- One of the nine children suspended from a Waycross elementary school after a plot to harm a teacher was unveiled spoke out Tuesday afternoon about how and why the plot came about.

Laniyah Garner, a shy, soft-spoken 9-year-old Center Elementary School third-grader, told Channel 4 that she felt threatened to participate in the plot but said she never planned to harm her teacher.

When asked what the kids were planning to do to their teacher, Laniyah said, "I think they said to hurt or kill her."

"I was shocked that she would even be involved with anything like that, and that anything like this would even happen. I was really speechless," said Laniyah's mother, Stephanie Lockie-Garner.

She said her daughter told her that she had been assigned a specific job in the plot -- to tie up the teacher's feet.

Laniyah said the plot was created because one girl had been sent to time out and another girl was also punished.

"Ms. Carter had took something from her that she wasn't supposed to be playing with," Laniyah said.

After the students' plot was uncovered after another child reported see a fellow classmate with a weapon, nine students were suspended from school and three of the nine were charged with crimes because they're accused of bringing a steak knife, handcuffs and other items to school to carry out the scheme.

Now, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has called for the teacher to be investigated and criticized the Ware County School District for how it handled the situation.

NAACP Wants Teacher Threatened By Students' Plot Investigated

"I think what we need is to look beyond the kids, and maybe we should find what really happened," said Larry Lockey, of the Ware County chapter of the NAACP.

The NAACP asked for the school district and the Justice Department to have an independent investigation to determine what provoked the students to form a plot to hurt their teacher.

"This is an issue about right and wrong, and we want to know what happened in that classroom where you have students who were A and B students -- overachievers in many ways -- that would cause those students to end up in a predicament like this," said Georgia NAACP President Edward Dubose.

At a Tuesday afternoon news conference that was attended by many community members and some of the nine suspended children's parents, the group's leader said there is more to the story than originally thought. Dubose said the students involved in the plot had at some point come forward to counselors at the elementary school about concerns with their teacher.

"What happened in that classroom that caused those students to reach a point after they had complained, we're told, to people over and over again and they were not listened to?" Dubose said.

The NAACP also called for the school board to hold an emergency meeting to look at the punishment handed out to the students allegedly involved in the plot.