Boy’s Skull Fractured At School: District Officials Call It An ‘Accident,’ Parents Suspect Bullying Is Behind It
A 7-year-old boy’s skull was fractured at school in Arcadia, California, and district officials are calling it “an accident.” The child’s parents suspect there’s a lot more to the story and feel that bullying is behind it.
The incident happened back in May at Baldwin Stocker Elementary School, KABC 7 News reports. Jenny Yang and Eli Tsou believe that their son, Jeremy Tsou, was bullied, but district officials and police say it was just an accident. Yang said she woke up to the sound of her son vomiting, screaming in pain, and having severe headaches.
Jeremy’s parents accuse the school of changing its story once it learned how severe the injuries were after the boy fractured his skull at school.
Yang describes how it all unfolded with her son and the school.
“That day he came home with a school note stating, ‘He was pushed by another student, causing him to fall down and hit his head on the desk.’ A week later I find out that the district investigation suggests that my son slipped on a pencil.”
The Arcadia Unified School District conducted its own investigation, which showed “no findings of bullying or physical contact by another student” and that “a second independent investigation was conducted by the Arcadia Police Department, and no findings of criminal conduct were determined.”
Jeremy’s father adds that the school claims to have completed a thorough investigation, “yet they omit the entire account of my son. They don’t include it at all in the reports.”
The boy who fractured his skull at school had to have extensive brain surgery over the summer. Jeremy is now back in school and enjoying the second grade. However, his parents want an independent investigation conducted. They haven’t yet decided whether to pursue legal action in the case.
According to the New York Daily News, a note from the school nurse indicated that the boy’s skull had been fractured. She wrote in the school notes of a “possible head injury.” It added that the injury “did not appear serious; however head injuries occasionally cause trouble hours or days later.”
According to Yang, at first the principal told her that he identified the student who bullied Jeremy and made him apologize to him. When she later met with district officials and school board members, they said that there was no sign that Jeremy was bullied. There was no solid consistency in anyone’s story, Yang says. She said everyone wanted to turn it around on her son and make it sound like the boy fractured his skull at school by slipping on a pencil.
Yang went to her Facebook page to vent about the incident.
“This is shocking and insulting because the school nurse, the teacher, the principal, and the school notes previously informed us that this boy hurt Jeremy.”
As Jeremy’s parents go on to say, it’s also unclear why the bully’s parents haven’t tried to meet with them or anything since then.
Yang also wrote on her Facebook page that as cynical as the school system has made her, she and Jeremy’s father are finding comfort in the support that others are offering them during this ordeal.
The Inquisitr wrote on a similar story last year, when a girl in kindergarten was severely injured on a school playground and officials said she injured herself playing on some of the equipment. The photos show her with bruises all over her face, and it appears as though she was beaten up. The incident happened in Mississippi.
The epidemic of bullying is all too prevalent in America’s school system, but are schools finding a way to hide it in some cases as well?
[Image via Justice For Jeremy/Facebook]
