A 16-year-old Detroit teenager was beaten so bad by classmates at his school that he had to get his jaw surgically repaired. And you won’t believe why!
The Detroit Free Press reports:
Willie Wallace was pummeled by what a police investigator said was as many as a dozen classmates at Allen Academy as he walked in a hallway to his last class of the day, his mother, Sylvia Simmons, said.
“He has made a lot of progress” toward healing since the fight, the second altercation at the school in less than a month, Simmons said. The first occurred several weeks ago after older boys tried to take Willie’s $130 Nike Air Force shoes and they were suspended, along with Willie, she said. The second incident occurred when some of the same group “tried to get even” for being suspended, Willie’s mother said.
“He has a fractured skull, he has blood on his brain and he bit half of his tongue off” in a seizure that he suffered soon after Wednesday’s fight, she said. The hospital listed him in serious but stable condition Friday.
“But he’s off the ventilator, thank God for that, and (Saturday) they’re going to do the first surgery on his jaw, so he can breathe properly and swallow properly,” Simmons said. She said her son was sucker-punched in the jaw as he walked into class in mid-afternoon Wednesday, and “then he rolled into the classroom and all these others jumped him.”
A Detroit police spokeswoman confirmed Friday that the department was investigating the incident and that “we do have one juvenile detained in connection with this case.”
The school’s board members provided the Free Press with this statement Friday: “Our thoughts and prayers are with our student and his family as he was involved in an altercation on Wednesday. . . The Allen Academy Board of Directors enforces a Zero Tolerance policy for violence and will continue to cooperate with the authorities as the situation is still under investigation.
“We have heightened security procedures at the school and will continue to implement measures for the overall safety and well-being of our students.”
Willie, who is called Tony and is his mother’s only child, is a sophomore at the school that he also attended in seventh and eighth grade, Simmons said.
“He’s not going back there, never again. We’re doing either home-school or on-line schooling. They say Detroit public schools are bad, but these academies are worse,” she said.
What kind of punishment do you think the teens involved in the beating should receive?
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(Photo Source: Nike Air Force 1 Facebook)
