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Norfolk middle school student says he was choked by a classmate

Posted at 12:01 AM, Apr 28, 2012
and last updated 2012-04-28 00:02:17-04

A Norfolk mom says her 7th grader was choked unconscious in the locker room at Lake Taylor Middle School.  She says the school didn't do enough to make sure her son was not seriously hurt.

Ladarius Hawthorne says he hit his head on a bench when he passed out.

"It was scary because when I woke up, I wanted to know why everyone was looking at me and they were just pointing, and I didn`t know what happened," says Ladarius.

He tells NewsChannel 3 his story as well as he can remember.

"We were in the locker room and this boy named Romano had come in there and started choking me and telling me to go to sleep. Then I just blacked out and fell on the floor," says Ladarius.

Ladarius says the boy thought he was someone else and attacked.  The gym teacher went into the locker room to check on students.  According to Ladarius' mother, what happened next was unacceptable.

"If there were no nurses there, they should have called 911.  911 was never called.  When were you going to call 911?  When he was still not conscious?  This could have been a life-threatening accident.  I don`t know."

Temacha Hawthorne says school officials really dropped the ball.  Not only were there no nurses, she says none of the school's six security guards responded.

Now she is worried something like that or even worse could happen again.  "Now he`s scared to go to school.  It shouldn`t be like that.  I`m supposed to entrust my child to you all when he`s at school and now he`s afraid to go to school?  It shouldn`t be like that at all."

School officials say this case is being reviewed by the school's principal and the administration.  Ladarius' mom says she plans on pulling him out of Lake Taylor Middle School at the end of the school year.