ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — A St. Johns County mother plans to sue the school district after she said her daughter was attacked by another student.
Video shows Mary Coffey’s daughter curled up in a ball in a school hallway as she's punched multiple times by another student. Coffey claims the school let her daughter's bullying escalate to the point that the incident happened, but the St. Johns County School District disagrees and said they took swift action after the incident.
Coffey claims her daughter was bullied before and after the incident in February that left her with bruises and led her to change schools. The school district said there were not bullying allegations made before the incident and after it, school leaders acted quickly.
Coffey said her 12-year-old daughter was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following an incident earlier this year at Sebastian Middle School.
“Everyone in the school who was cheering and watching and filming, she said at one point, ‘I looked up at everyone and realized they wanted me to be dead,’” Coffey said about her daughter.
Surveillance video shows the incident and in another video, yelling, cheering and "barking" can be heard. Coffey said this wasn’t the first time her daughter had been bullied and claims the school allowed it to escalate.
“They absolutely were aware of it,” Coffey said. “They knew about it and their reaction was to invite her to a guidance counselor group to cope with what was happening rather than prevent it from happening.”
First Coast News asked Paul Abbatinozzi, the associate superintendent for student support services with the school district, about claims employees knew about the bullying.
“I don’t have anything that supports that allegation,” Abbatinozzi said. “What I do know is that the incident that prompted this, we took very strict and quick, efficient actions on it.”
Abbatinozzi said the student who punched Coffey’s daughter is now in an alternative school. A police report shows she is in a juvenile diversion program due to a misdemeanor battery charge from the incident.
“In my review of this, there wasn’t anything leading up that the school missed something or wasn’t doing anything preventative,” Abbatinozzi said. “But again when this occurred, significant action was taken pretty quickly with regards to this.”
Abbatinozzi said safety is the district’s top priority. Coffey said through a lawsuit, she hopes to receive money for her daughter’s therapy and protect other bullied students.
The school district has an online link to a form to report bullying that they encourage everyone to use. It can be found here.