“I felt someone push me from behind, and I fell straight to the ground. I smashed my face on the concrete.”
SAN ANTONIO — A third grade student at Herman Hirsch Elementary School, part of San Antonio ISD, suffered a broken nose after being assaulted at school.
Now his parents say the school isn’t taking accountability.
“I was upset. I didn’t know what to do, seeing his nose like that?” said Melissa Corpus, the injured boy’s parent.
Corpus said her son was playing a game called Zombie Tag when he ran into another student.
“He accidently bumped into the kid while he was sitting on the floor, trying to stop himself from falling on him,” she said.
Things escalated from there, Corpus said, when her son was assaulted by the student he ran into after class.
“I felt someone push me from behind and I fell straight to the ground,” Corpus’ boy told the school in a statement. “I smashed my face on the concrete.”
Once he was on the ground, “the other kid pushed my head down to the ground, after I already smashed my face, then he continued to kick me on the back. The coach got him off of me.”
Medical records show Corpus’ son suffered a broken nose.
The next day, she went to the campus to speak with administrators. Corpus was then told her son did something inappropriate to the student first, but administrators offered no proof.
Corpus said she wants the school to take accountability for the attack.
“They did tell us they weren’t going to be able to do anything about it. There wasn’t going to be anything, nothing was going to happen. (That) they couldn’t do anything, he’s underage,” Corpus said.
Under Texas law, a child under the age of 10 can’t be criminally charged for such offenses, due to their age. Corpus said she is not looking for criminal charges, but feels the student who attacked her son should have been suspended immediately.
We reached out to the district on Monday. The district sent us this statement Tuesday:
“We are aware of an altercation between two elementary students last week that resulted in one student receiving an injury requiring medical attention. We are taking this incident very seriously. A police report was taken, and the offending student is facing consequences according to our student code of conduct. The safety of our students is our utmost priority, and we continue to work with the parents of the injured child to address their needs and concerns.”
Corpus said, as of Friday, she hasn’t received any further communication from the school or district.
“Something worse could have happened to my son,” she said. “If it wasn’t his nose, maybe he could have split his head open.”