An 11-year-old girl now suffers from brain damage after being caught in the crossfire of a substitute teacher and another student. Cha’Kyra Thomas, a former student at Detroit’s Hope Academy elementary school, was hit with a metal hockey stick thrown by her substitute teacher meant for another student.
The young girl told Fox 2 Detroit that the teacher, Jacqueline Brown, was angry with another student in her class. “She was yelling and doing some cussing,” Thomas said. “The next thing I know I feel something hard on the side of my head.”
Thomas was left dazed and confused, and she didn’t realize a hockey stick had hit her.
Fox 2 reports her family plans to sue the school district, the teacher, the charter school and the staffing company that placed the substitute teacher.
According to Atlanta Black Star, Jon Marko, the family’s attorney, rendered what happened: “Brown was filling in for a permanent teacher last May when she got angry at one of the students. In a rage, she picked up a metal hockey stick and hurled it at the child. It missed the intended target, and hit Thomas, an innocent bystander.”
In an interview with Fox 2, Marko expressed anger for his client, asking, “What kind of a teacher throws a hockey stick at a fifth-grader’s head? I mean you obviously have to have something wrong with your head.”
Marko claims the school administration lost track of her after the incident.
He continued, “When the mother of this little girl gets to the school and is wondering, ‘Oh, my God, where’s my daughter?’ They couldn’t even find her. She was found wandering the hallways, confused, with blood running down her face.”
Fox 2 reports the young girl received staples in her head, treating a gash resulting from the hockey stick.
Thomas said she’s experienced memory loss and nightmares. “Now I got to wear glasses, and I can’t remember stuff real well,” she said. “It’s like flashes of what happened that day I got hit on my head, and I remember kids just laughing at me.”
The student was present for Brown’s sentencing on Feb. 23, after she was criminally charged with the assault and pleaded no contest to one count of child abuse, according to Atlanta Black Star.
The outlet reports that Brown’s plea agreement stipulates she will serve two years of probation, be mandated to attend anger management classes, and will never be permitted to teach or hold a position in a school without the court’s approval.
Brown reportedly never apologized to the 10-year-old, and Hope Academy has not commented on the incident.
