Middle School Students’ Scheme Causes Teacher to Fight for Her Life

Bananas from the French Antilles (French West Indies) are exhibited during the 2015 editio
PATRICK KOVARIK/AFP/Getty Images

Three middle school students who were well aware their teacher had a serious allergy planned a scheme that sent her into anaphylactic shock and a fight for her life.

“That could be attempted murder,” said a Columbus, Ohio, City Schools security officer, heard talking to Columbus police officers in a body camera video.

According to ABC6, the three seventh grade students from Starling K-8 School are 12 and 13 years old, and were “well aware their teacher had a serious allergy” to bananas “when it was used against her last school year.”

The body camera video shows the security officer escorting police to the art teacher’s classroom door where signs are posted that state, “Banana Free Zone.” Another sign informs students to wash their hands if they have eaten a banana that day.

“All of the kids know she’s deathly allergic to bananas,” the security officer told the police. “If it touches her, she will go into anaphylactic shock.”

According to the security officer, during a lunch period, the three students smeared banana on the teacher’s classroom door and doorknob, and then threw the bananas at her while she was in the classroom.

Within 15 minutes, the teacher went into anaphylactic shock.

“She starts to change colors,” said the security officer. “They gave her one epipen; it wasn’t working. They gave her another epipen (and) her throat was starting to close up.”

The teacher was taken immediately to the hospital where, ultimately, she recovered.

“They’re definitely going down for expulsion,” said security staff on the bodycam video.

The three students were sentenced to probation through juvenile court.

According to the news report, “Columbus Police say felonious assaults on teachers have increased in 2019 with more than 30 cases since January.”

Federal data released Thursday show serious incidents of violence in the nation’s public schools are on the rise at the same time schools are still employing Obama-era “restorative justice” disciplinary policies for students of color and nearly all schools are touting “social emotional learning” (SEL) practices.

report released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), an arm of the U.S. Education Department, showed that during the 2017-2018 academic year, an estimated 962,300 violent incidents occurred in U.S. public schools, with 71 percent of schools reporting at least one violent incident.

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