TUCKER, Ga. — The mother of a Tucker Middle School student is claiming a teaching assistant roughed her son up after he refused to perform a demeaning act.
The boy's mother, Catherine Hall, showed Channel 2's Eric Philips pictures of her 12-year-old son, Deshawn, in a torn shirt. She said his teacher is to blame.
"How can he even sleep at night?" Hall told Philips.
She said Daeshawn was involved in horse play with another student and accidentally knocked the teacher's cafeteria tray out of his hands. She said the teacher demanded Deshawn to pick up the tray before putting his hands on Deshawn.
"He told him to pick it up, and Deshawn said ‘No,' and he just yanked Deshawn's shirt back and forth," said Danny Castillo, another student who was there.
According to an incident report, the teaching assistant said he was trying to stop Deshawn from fighting.
"He wasn't preventing him from fighting. He just didn't want to pick the tray up," Hall said.
Castillo was also upset over the incident.
"I got mad because that was my friend, and I don't like nobody touching him like that," he told Philips.
Hall tried to bring simple battery charges against the worker, but in a hearing on Friday, a judge said the incident did not meet the standard for that crime. School officials said the teaching assistant was under investigation.