I told you so.

I've been saying it for a year and a half now... if we don't do something about Ricky, he's going to put a kid in the hospital. I said those exact words as recently as this Monday infact, but no one listens to the teacher because no one else has any answers, and since avoiding problems usually works, that seems to be the tactic that has until today been taken with Ricky. Today, Ricky attacked a kid so bad that he had to be sent to the hospital.

Unprovolked, Ricky attacked a messenger from another class in the eye, repeatedly until I was able to pry them apart. I want to make it known that this is not the type of moment when I feel like screaming "I told you so!", but then I know that I've been telling the Child Study Team, the schools part-time psychologist, Rickys case manager, the administration and his parents for months that Jay was a danger, and then he brought a knife to school... and today, Ricky hurt a kid so bad he was sent to the hospital to get the skin around his eye sewn back on.

I am not going to add any commentary or anything... but I am posting the incident report that accompanied the attack... as always, I changed names, but all the events are the same. I guess I could talk about the situation for a long time, I have a lot of theories as to whhy Ricky did all of this so unprovolked...

Incident Report

Students involved: B.J.
Ricky

Date: March 30, 2007

Location: Room 4-- Time : 1:45pm

Reporting teacher: Ms. G----------

Incident:

Soon after lunch time there was a knock on the classroom door. I answered the door and let B.J. in the room to deliver a note from his teacher, Ms. J. J------. B.J. stood and waited for me to reply to the letter and began talking to one of my students, Tyler . At that time S------ made a comment to B.J. that I did not hear, but noticed that it upset him. My tudents were asking him about a fight that he had gotten into a few days prior. They wanted to hear the "details", but B.J. didn't want to talk about it. S----- and B.J. started to play fight, but not physically because they were not close enough. I asked S---- to be seated, but at that time he made a move as if to attack B.J. , and then the situation became more loud.

At this time, Ricky became very upset and stood up from his seat at the back of the room. He quickly ran towards B.J. , knocking over desks on his way. Ricky approached B.J. from behind, grabbing both of his shoulders and turning B.J.s body towards him, but B.J. automatically grabbed at Ricky, grasping at his shirt. At this point Ricky yelled "Get the fuck off my shirt, man" and started to physically attack B.J. Ricardo repeatedly punched Brandon in the head and face as Ms. C---- and I tried talked to the boys and tried to separate them.

B.J. was trying to cover his head at the same time as he refused to let go of Ricky’s shirt. It was as if B.J. froze, he seemed to be unable to let go of the shirt. However, Ricky refused to stop punching until B.J. would let go of him. I was standing behind Ricky, holding his shoulders, trying to keep him as far away from B.J. as possible, and although he was unable to make full contact with his punches, each time he swung he was hitting B.J. in the face and head.

I counted to three and called “break,” (a tactic I always use in my classroom to break up fights), but B.J. did not let go, so even though Ricky stopped punching for a few seconds, he continued once he saw that B.J. was not following the rules of a "break." Ricky began punching again, yelling for B.J. to let go of his shirt, repeatedly hitting B.J. in the right eye, because the rest of B.J.s face was mostly blocked by the way he was crouched holding himself as far away from Ricky as possible without letting go of his shirt. I was then able to pry Ricky’s shirt out of B.J’s hand, and as soon as Brandon felt that he had been "released," and he ran out of the classroom. I could see that B.J. had been seriously injured, as blood was already running into his hands as he covered his eye and ran down the hallway.

I worked to calm my class as they set the chairs straight. Ricky told the class that he was glad that he had punched him and wished that he had hurt him worse for pulling on his shirt and makin it wrinkled. Ricky then went right back to his seat to do his work, very casually, as if nothing had happened. When I asked him whey he attacked B.J. , he said that it was because he had pulled on his shirt, but then realized that the fight started before that and did not answer any other questions. I did not call security because I felt that anything that might have set Ricky off more would have put B.J. and possibly other children in the classroom in more danger. I instead waited for security to come to my room realizing that B.J. would return to his classroom and get help from there.

About 5 minutes after the end of the incident the building principal came to my classroom and pulled Ricky out.
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Besides what is written there the only other information I have (that is not my long winded rants about behavior mods and discipline and theraputic programs that are needed but not in place, and the ways that we are putting young minority boys into situations where they will doubtlessly fail because we are setting them up for prison instead of productive life, etc...) is that the nurse called BJs mom to pick him up to take him straight to the ER. She said that she couldn't get the bleeding in his right eye to stop, and that she wasn't sure what they could do as far as sewing him up because it was all so close to his eye. As for Ricky, he had 3 cuts on his nuckles from punching, and his knuckles were about twice the size they should be from swelling, his middle knuckle was turning black and blue from hitting so hard. He had band-aides and an ice pack, and was extremely calm when I picked him up from the nurse to take him to his bus. Most of the incident he couldn't recall. I think that he "blacked out"... he has always said that when he gets angry all he can see is blackness.