Lawyer says Georgia student’s leg amputated after being slammed to ground

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A 13-year-old student in Georgia was badly injured after a behavioral specialist slammed him to the ground multiple times while at school last month, the boy’s attorney said.

Montravious Thomas’s injuries – which included a fractured tibia, a dislocated knee and permanent nerve damage – were so severe that his right leg had to be amputated on Tuesday.

“It was certainly an emotional issue for him, and it still is; he’s 13,” the boy’s attorney, Renee Tucker, told The Washington Post. “He was scared with all the surgery. He doesn’t understand what happened and why it happened.”

Tucker said the incident happened shortly before 2 p.m. on Sept. 12 at Edgewood Student Services, an alternative school in the Muscogee County School District in Columbus, Georgia.

Because it was an alternative school, Montravious was supposed to attend only a few hours of class in the afternoon, Tucker said.

There have been various accounts of how and why the injuries happened.

Tucker said she had heard some stating that Montravious was being disorderly and was swinging something in the classroom. The Columbus Ledger-Inquirer cited a police report saying that Bryant Mosley, the behavioral specialist, told an officer he had to physically restrain Montravious due to behavioral issues.

Tucker, the attorney, said that what she knows is that Montravious wanted to leave the classroom to call his mother and have her pick him up. But Mosley refused to let him leave and picked the boy up and slammed him to the ground, Tucker said. Montravious was slammed to the ground two more times, she said.

Tucker said there were at least three other school employees who saw the incident, but no one took the boy to the hospital after he yelled in pain and said his right leg was numb. Instead, Mosley carried Montravious to the school bus, and he was driven home.

His mother took him to the hospital, where they arrived around 3:30 p.m. – about 90 minutes after the incident was alleged to have happened.

“The leg was never stabilized until he got to the hospital,” Tucker said.

The boy was airlifted to a hospital in Atlanta that night for further examination. Over the next month, Montravious went through four surgeries to save his right leg, Tucker said. It was amputated Tuesday night, and he will soon have to go through physical therapy.

“My heart goes out to the family, but I have no comment,” Mosley said, referring further questions to his lawyer, Robert Poydasheff.

Mosley is a behavioral specialist for Mentoring Behavioral Services, which provides contract work to the Muscogee County School District. He is not a district employee.

“At this point, we are still in the early stages of investigating the events which occurred,” Poydasheff, the attorney, said in an email. “We are certainly very concerned for Montravious and our hearts go out to him. He and his family are in our thoughts and prayers.”

Valerie Fuller, spokeswoman for the Muscogee County School District, said in statement that the school officials will thoroughly review the incident “to determine all of the facts and to make any necessary recommendation.”

According to Fuller, Witnesses said the teen was up and walking and did not appear to be in distress after the incident. School officials also tried multiple times to contact the boy’s mother, but to no avail, Fuller said.

Mosley is trained to prevent and manage aggressive behavior, Fuller said. He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling.

Physically restraining a student is prohibited in Georgia public schools except in instances in which the student “is a danger to himself or others” and is not responding to orders from adults, according to the Georgia Department of Education.

But Tucker said she and the boy’s family believe physically restraining Montravious would not have resulted in such severe injuries. They say Mosley did what’s called prone restraint, which involves placing a student face down on the floor and applying pressure on the student’s body, which is prohibited in Georgia public schools.

Whether that is the case remains unknown. The Columbus Police Department is still investigating the incident.

Tucker said she has requested video footage from inside and outside the classroom, copies of personnel files of those who may have witnessed the incident and information on the school district’s policies on restraining students.

Tucker said the family plans to file a lawsuit against the school district within the next two months. It will focus on failure to supervise and provide medical attention, negligent training and negligent hiring.

Montravious was attending East Columbus Middle School before he was transferred to Edgewood Student Services, which has an alternative program for third- to 12th-graders with behavioral issues.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Kristine Guerra

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