Daily News: Child Bound & Beaten in School
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Daily News: Held & Hines LLP in the Daily News for Representing a Child Bound & Beaten in School
Arab boy bound & beaten in class, suit says
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, July 31st 2007, 4:00 AM
Two Brooklyn schoolgirls allegedly bound a boy of Arab descent with tape, locked him in a classroom closet and bombarded him for eight minutes with ethnic slurs before their substitute fourth-grade teacher did anything.
The shocking charges are laid out in a lawsuit filed in Federal Court seeking unspecified damages for 10-year-old Abdulla Mohammed, who was 9 at the time.
The boy suffered “severe personal injuries – humiliation, ridicule and gross embarrassment” from the incident in his fourth-grade classroom at Public School 114 in Canarsie on Oct. 26, said his lawyer, Michael Lazarowitz. The suit blames the city and Education Department for failing to supervise the school. Education officials declined to comment.
Lazarowitz said the girls attacked Abdulla from behind, taped his arms behind his back, put tape on his nose and mouth, then locked him in the closet.
As Abdulla, who was born in Yemen, struggled, Lazarowitz said the girls hurled “racial and ethnic slurs to the effect – ‘go back to your country, we don’t want you here.'”
He said it was eight minutes before the substitute teacher ended the boy’s ordeal.
“The teacher claimed she did not see the tape and thought the kids were just playing a game in the closet,” the lawyer said. “If she did not see what was going on in her classroom, that is negligence,” he said.
Lazarowitz said his client finished the year at PS 114 but will go to another school in September. The girls involved were suspended, but he had no details.
