DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A DeKalb County mother is suing the school district because she said a hazard in a high school weight room badly injured her son.
Photos of the boy's gruesome cut were part of the lawsuit the family filed against the DeKalb County School District.
“I didn't even get so much after as a follow-up call to say, ‘Is Zaire OK?’”
Some of those photos are too graphic to show. Repairing those cuts cost thousands of dollars and the teen's family said the district could have prevented the cuts from ever happening.
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Akima Clyburn-Green remembers the day doctors removed bandages on her son's leg and she saw the 6-inch cut for the first time.
“When they did, he screamed, I screamed and the nurse screamed,” Clyburn-Green told Channel 2’s Matt Johnson.
Her son Zaire, 15, cut his leg in the weight room at Arabia Mountain High School in March, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.%
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The suit claims Zaire was cut when he was running during football workouts and his leg hit an exposed piece of metal from a broken electrical outlet cover.
“You don’t walk around your own home with outlets exposed because that's a hazard for children,” Clyburn-Green said.
Clyburn-Green took a picture of the outlet a week after the incident and it appears someone covered it with some duct tape.
She says that's not enough.
“The outlet should have been repaired right away,” Clyburn-Green told Johnson.
The school district told Johnson they “cannot comment on pending legal matters."
Michael Rafi represents the family and said the district declined twice to pay for any of the $56,000 in medical bills.
“There was a building code violation. It caused a young boy to be severely injured and as a result the school won’t take responsibility,” Rafi said.
The teen's mother said she was left with no other choice.
“I didn't even get so much after as a follow-up call to say, ‘Is Zaire OK?’” Clyburn-Green said.
The teen spent three days in a hospital and spent some time in a wheelchair, but he's recovering now and back to playing football.
His mother said new bills keep coming in.
Cox Media Group
