The parents of a six year old student at Crowell Elementary School are suing Turlock for negligence in a case where the young student was stabbed in the throat with a pencil, and not properly attended to.

The situation started when one student “poked” another student with a normal wooden pencil in the throat. The Turlock Police and TurlockUnifiedSchool District have officially ruled the incident as an accident. However, many witnesses continue to support the victim’s version of the incident. Many are saying that the student that stabbed the victim is the same student that has previously bullied him on numerous occasions.

TUSD Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, Mike Trainor, commenting on behalf of Superintendent, Sonny Da Marto, released a statement that stated the two boys were pretending to sword fight with their pencils in a classroom when the incident occurred.

“One child stumbled forward and the other child was accidentally poked,” Trainor said. “There was some indication the child may have actually poked himself in the scuffle.”

A licensed vocational nurse was then called to walk the child down to the office. Trainor described the pencil as being “pinched in the skin of the child’s neck.” The nurse had followed standard first-aid and reporting procedures, saying that no bleeding had been found and the child did not appear to be in any physical pain.

The boy sat in the office for 10 to 15 minutes with the pencil stuck in his neck, before his grandfather arrived. He asked for a piece of tape and secured the pencil to child’s neck, then drove the child to the ER.

“This was clearly an accident and not a malicious act,” Trainor concludes. “The child was not ‘stabbed’ as has been mistakenly reported in the media, but was inadvertently and unintentionally poked. The district acted appropriately and professionally to provide immediate care for the injured student.”

Turlock Police Department spokesperson Officer Mayra Lewis confirmed Thursday that School Resource Officer Joseph Ramos interviewed the boy allegedly responsible for the “poking.”  A second witness was also interviewed for a new, follow-up report.

“The boy and the witness both claimed that the victim slipped and fell on his own pencil while playing swords.”

The Turlock Police ruled it an accident but, the father of the victim adamantly supports that it was a malicious act. The mother decided to remove both her victimized son, and her daughter (also in the same class) from school.

CrowellElementary School’s nurse was said to be attending to another emergency, which is supported by the victim’s grandfather’s statement that no nurse was present when he picked up the child. The father had taken the boy to the Emanuel ER where Emergency Medical Staff had stated that the boy’s injury was serious and transferred him via ambulance to the Children’s Hospital of Central California for treatment. As of yet, the conflict remains open.