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Kentucky Teacher Fired After Video Shows Her Dragging Boy With Autism

(CNN) — A Kentucky school district fired a teacher after a video showed her dragging a 9-year-old boy with autism through the halls of a school. The Greenup Cou...
teacherdrag

(CNN) — A Kentucky school district fired a teacher after a video showed her dragging a 9-year-old boy with autism through the halls of a school.

The Greenup County School District announced the teacher’s termination Monday, more than two months after the October incident took place, CNN affiliate WSAZ-TV reported.

“The teacher was removed from the school and a formal investigation was conducted,” Sherry Horsely, the school district’s superintendent, said in a statement to WSAZ. “The superintendent also followed protocol and reported the incident to the Kentucky Education Standards Board.”

Angel Nelson told CNN Monday that her son was removed from a classroom after he had an outburst. Video from the school’s cameras, which Nelson shared on Facebook, appears to show a woman dragging a young boy by the wrists through the school’s hallways. At different points in the video, the boy is either lying on his back or sliding on his knees.

The school district did not provide the teacher’s name or title.

Student’s meltdown leads to dragging from room to room

Nelson said in a Facebook post that her son has been diagnosed with “autism, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety and depression. In addition, his speech is also limited.” She said that he is prone to “experiencing a meltdown” because of his diagnoses.

Nelson and her family had just moved into the district in October, WSAZ reported.

“He’s trying to adapt and make friends,” she told CNN Monday.

She said her son got frustrated after a teacher told him to keep working, or do more work, and he wanted to take a break.

“He was not hurting anyone,” she said.

Nelson said the teacher grabbed her son by the wrist and bent it backward. She then dragged the boy down the hallway “from one classroom into another.”

The camera within the classroom was turned toward a corner, Nelson said, so there’s no video of what happened in the classroom. Her son said the teacher threw him down hard onto a chair, Nelson wrote in her Facebook post.

“We will never truly know what took place behind that closed door because of my son’s speech limitations,” Nelson wrote on Facebook. “This incident was violent enough to not only injure my child, but to also destroy his shoes.”

Nelson said the same day her son was dragged, she had X-rays taken of his wrist and tailbone.

“The doctor diagnosed him with a possible left wrist fracture,” she said, adding her son also had an MRI scan of his wrists.

“He had a confirmed sprain in one of his wrists,” she said. “In the days following, he suffered swelling and bruising around his wrist.”

Nelson said the injuries will cause her son emotional trauma. She says the teacher humiliated him in front of other students.

“She made him feel different,” Nelson said.

The child, Nelson said, will need have “more intense occupational therapy to regain his skills that took so long to grasp.”

“Teachers are supposed to stop the bullying, not be the bullies,” she said.

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