11 Alive
A Georgia school nurse is being accused of cursing and using a racial slur against an 11-year-old in the school cafeteria, 11 Alive reports.
Witness statements given by six children and three adults described the explosive confrontation between Beverly Barnes, a nurse at Mundy’s Mill Middle School in Jonesboro, and 11-year-old Jason Ezzard, who had been tossing a bag of chips back and forth with another boy.
“I’m going to f—k you up,” Barnes allegedly told the sixth-grader. “I’m going to knock your lights out.”
The incident was caught on surveillance video; however, citing privacy, Clayton County will not release the surveillance, although it did allow Jason’s mother to view it.
“Degrading. Very degrading,” Jason’s mother, Tormeka Ezzard, told the news station. “‘I’m going to f—k you up’—you’re talking to an 11-year-old. ‘I’m going to knock your f—king lights out.’ You’re talking to an 11-year-old!
“My heart, I swear, was going 100 miles per hour, and I had to remind myself to breathe,” she added.
The school principal acknowledged in written reports that Barnes yelled expletives at the little boy and even used a racial slur before another teacher intervened in the matter, 11 Alive notes. A witness statement also noted that Barnes “pushed his head.”
After an investigation, the school suspended the nurse without pay for two days; officials said it was an appropriate punishment, given that there had never been any other complaint against the nurse. Jason’s mother, however, feels that the school’s response is too lenient.
“She’s abused my child physically, mentally and verbally, and no one will help me,” Ezzard said.
The mother wants the school to reopen the investigation and mete out an adequate punishment to the nurse.
“If it would’ve been the other way around, Jason would have been locked up, on the spot,” Ezzard pointed out. “I would have been going to pick my child up at the Clayton County Juvenile Detention Center. What makes her any different from Jason?”
Read more at 11 Alive.