Posted on 03/10/2006 8:43:53 PM PST by Samwise
Several Martinsville High School students say teachers stopped their calls to 911 while a fellow student was choking, because cell phones aren't allowed on campus.
Witnesses tell police the victim was rushing to finish his lunch before leaving the cafeteria, because you can't bring food outside. That's when they say he started choking, went into cardiac arrest, and died at the hospital.
Multiple 911 calls went out from Martinsville High School.
Witnesses say Jesse Tucker choked on a hamburger. Paramedics rushed the 15 year-old freshman to the hospital, where he later died.
"It's really hard to grasp the fact that you witnessed someone's death," says one student, "It's really hard to take in."
24 Hour News 8 spoke to another student witness who also wants to remain anonymous. He says one of his friends tried to call 911 with his cell phone, but just as he reached an operator, he says a teacher closed his phone saying cell phones aren't allowed on campus.
"She just closed his phone. She didn't do much to help the situation. She was panicky, she didn't go to the nurse's office," says one of the students.
Martinsville Police Chief Frans Hollanders says the investigation is still in preliminary stages, and at this point, investigators aren't pointing fingers.
"We've heard rumors to such an effect, that a cell phone was slapped out of a kids hand," Hollanders says, "We haven't been able to determine that at all whatsoever."
School officicals wouldn't talk on camera, but we caught up with an assistant superintendent and he issued this statement, "We are still in shock. We do believe the teacher did everything she could in the situation."
The police chief is encouraging witnesses to share their stories with investigators.
24 Hour News 8 did speak to Jesse's father Friday night. Understandably, he says he's still in shock and just wants to know exactly what happened.
An autopsy is scheduled for Saturday morning.
I was eating lunch in the office with 4 other adults one day and I started choking on a piece of chicken. I couldn't talk and all I could do was make hand signals at my throat. Everyone just looked at me with weird looks. I could not believe that 4 intelligent adults couldn't see I was choking!
After what seemed like an eternity, I could feel that I was about to pass out and I grabbed a chair and started trying to do the Heimlich on myself. It was then that it clicked in one of the guy's heads that I was choking and he ran over and practically lifted me off the ground and I hurled a large piece of chicken across the room. (I ended up having to go into emergency surgery because the large jagged half of a wishbone had embedded itself in my esophagus)
I would never have believed that an intelligent adult could watch a person choke to death and not realize what was happening, but I'm a believer now.
I remember when a little girl drowned near a beach that was filled with people. I think I remember that many did notice, but they all figured someone else was going to rescue her.
See? IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE DO IT YOURSELVE PEOPLE!
That particular case was at Caney Creek High School in Texas. Boyfriend loaning the inhaler was suspended, never went back to school - in fact was homeschooled after that. Boyfriend and girlfriend were on identical prescriptions of albuterol.
Link to the school bus case:
http://www.law.suffolk.edu/faculty/addinfo/blumenson/OneStrike.pdf
Article mentions the case as well as other zero tolerance/zero intelligence idiocies.
I got the ages wrong, the girl who loaned the inhaler was 12.
If I was one of the parents in these cases, I'd be going ballistic. This teaches kids that anyone on the goobermint payroll is a (censored) idiot. A clusterbleep.
Do you also have school choice in the Netherlands like in Belgium? John Stossel had a special TV program on education and mediocrity in the United States, showing the teachers' union militant resistance to school choice. One thing that Stossel had shown however was that in the Belgian system, the education budget money is not attached to the school (determined by some head count), but to the student, and it was up to the schools to compete for the student. If the parent thinks that a particular school is not doing the teaching job, the parent is free to move the child to another school. Yes, government funding is still involved, but there is still a market mechanism where the parent decides where the child goes.
'What's wrong with some people that they think rules are more important than common sense? The kids who were intimidated and stopped by the teachers will live with the guilt of not having acted for the rest of their Lives. They'll always be wondering, "What if I hadn't listened to the teacher? He might be alive today."'
I agree. And, I can't help but pause to think how this teacher would have reacted if it had been a gunman in the cafeteria.
"Zero tolerance was a way to up the numbers of white boys kicked out of school for offenses such as posessing an axe in the trunk of a car left over from a boy scout presentation or drawing a picture of a gun..."
When I was in high school a number of students (seniors, juniors old enough to drive) were also on the volunteer rescue squad. Some even had full crash kits in the trunks of their cars (well, maybe not jaws of life, the model the squad had at the time required a hydraulic power unit that was carried on the fire truck). Some were a bit goofs in school, but when the police radio sent a call out they were all business. These days carrying such a kit would likely land them in prison for weapons and drugs.
Of course back in those days no one played such petty games with the volunteer firemen and rescue squad. They were doing this on their own time, and you might need them someday. A rescue squad member may live on the same block, so if the call goes out at your address, the first arrival may be in less than a minute.
I will point out that the majority of the mass school shootings so far have been done by middle to upper class "white boys".
At this point they are bashing an "anonymous" teacher.
"And miss the fun of throwing gratuitous insults at teachers and public schools? ;-)"
We have a bullseye!
From your screen name, blind denial of what the student witnesses said and robotic defense of teachers, may I assume that you, yourself are in the edumacatuion corrupting the youth bidness?
I forgot to include the historical background...
Yes, I am as anti-NEA as anyone but in this case the most likely thing is that 911 had already been notified, the students and teachers knew it, and then a bunch of students took it as a opportunity to wip out their cell phones and call friends, ready to claim they were calling 911 if a teacher confronted them.
Even if this kid was calling 911, I can't see how a lawsuit could move forward if the teacher is accused of stopping the 5th, 10th, or 15th call to 911.
911 recordings and cell phone records should be able to determine if a teacher cut off the first call to 911, so the truth will come out.
If only that were true.
I'm going to guess that the school nurse is only there part time, So if it's Tuesday, the student has to wait until he/she's back on Wednesday.
What do I win?
What is your point? (Serious question, it is not obvious to me what point you are trying to make.)
A book title of a few years ago covers DAMN NEAR ALL that goes on in this country, indeed, the WORLD today. The title? "THE DEATH OF COMMON SENSE."
The other element that plays into this NEEDLESS TRAGEDY is my permutation of the Outback restaurant advertising motto of "No rules, just right." NO RIGHTS, JUST RULES!
I often wonder if the increasing stupidity and lack of discernment of more and more American people -- in this case, one of those among us who, as a TEACHER, is SUPPOSED to be better educated and perspicacious -- doesn't put us in jeopardy of repeating the disaster visited upon the world in the 30s when obedience to the RULES promulgated by their insane furher and his minions was more important than moral and ethical considerations. MILLIONS paid for THAT national lapse.
Speaking of titles, there is one famous song title that really ought to be changed to "God SAVE America."
A previous poster claimed that zero tolerance policies were a way for school administrators to appear anti-racist when "expel[ling] gang members, rapists, violent attackers and murderers", who were presumably all black, by giving said administrators a way to expel white boys for minor offenses.
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