fuRY AT SCHOOL ATTACK
Kid dragged by a parent – ma says no one helped
A BRONX third-grader was eating breakfast in his school’s cafeteria when another student’s mom suddenly stormed in and dragged him off by the neck, according to the boy’s mother and a school staffer.
Sanavya Hodges said her child, Jalen Swinton, 8, was eating breakfast peacefully at Public School 146 on April 27 when another mother burst in and hauled him off to the principal’s office.
Hodges, 39, said both Jalen and officials at the Morrisania school told her this story, but school staffers won’t say who the aggressor is and Jalen doesn’t know her name. She also said school staffers won’t say why she did such a painful and humiliating thing to Jalen.
Education Department officials are investigating the matter. But Hodges said that’s too little, too late, and she wants her son to be transferred to a safer school.
“I asked if anyone did anything to stop her,” said Hodges, a stay-at home mom. “No one intervened. They just allowed her to do that.”
Police and EMTs responded to the school after the incident, but no arrests were made.
The following day Jalen woke up hunched over with a stiff neck and Hodges took him to taken to St. Barnabas Hospital.
A St. Barnabas discharge form shows Jalen suffered from a muscle strain when he was released from the hospital April 28.
“The hospital said he has a muscle sprain and his neck is still hurting,” said Hodges. Hodges said the boy is too traumatized to return to school, and she doesn’t feel safe sending him there anyway.
She said school staff told her the parent who manhandled her son is a member of the PS 146 PTA and has a daughter in Jalen’s class. Hodges said she hasn’t received any calls from staffers about the kids having any problems.
After the incident, PS 146 Principal Ronald Laurent sent a letter home to parents informing them not to enter the Cauldwell Ave. building during school hours, citing the “recent events in the national and local media.”
But Hodges said Laurent, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, won’t identify the woman who laid hands on her son.
A PS 146 staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Laurent dropped the ball. “No parent can go into a child’s school and go where they want and do what they want,” the staffer said. “This should’ve never happened.”
Giselle Colon, 31, whose daughter is in third grade at PS 146, said she was shocked. “That’s crazy. I would never have thought something like that would happen here,” she said. “It’s unbelievable.”
Hodges said her son is a wellbehaved child who was suspended from an after-school program for horseplay for one day last year, but has never been suspended from class.
Police said they were unable to find a record of the incident.
Education Department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot said the school immediately reported the matter to the NYPD and gave them the necessary information to conduct an investigation.