A 12-year-old Parker Junior High School student is hospitalized following an attack on school grounds following Wednesday’s dismissal, according to a Flossmoor police report.
The youth was walking past the row of parked buses at about 2:40 p.m. when he was jumped from behind by another student, the report states. The assailant grabbed the boy, picked him up and slammed him to the ground, police said. The boy struck his head on the ground during the attack.
Following the attack, the assailant took the boy’s shoes and book bag and threw them into an “unknown location,” the report states. After that, the assailant boarded his bus and rode home.
The victim returned to Parker, where school staff members contacted his mother.
According to the boy, his assailant had been bullying him for the past two weeks, the report states.
When he saw him standing on School Street — his normal route to walk home — the boy decided to take a different way out of the school area. He started walking past the row of buses. Another student asked him if he was going to fight the bullying boy that day.
A moment later he was jumped from behind, the report states.
At Parker, Assistant Principal Bruce Nieminski returned the boy’s shoes and book bag, which had been recovered in the bus pick-up area. Principal Lynn Westerlund told the boy’s mother that a number of people — both students and adults — had witnessed the attack, the report states. Parker staff members told the boy’s mother that she should take him to the hospital because of his head injury.
Deputy Chief Tod Kamleiter said Friday that Flossmoor police were not informed about the attack until Wednesday night, when the boy’s mother called the department.
The boy’s mother took him to the emergency room at Franciscan St. James Hospital in Olympia Fields. X-rays showed that he had no broken bones but a CT scan revealed that there might be bleeding in his brain.
He was transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit at Christ Advocate Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he remains under observation. Kamleiter said Flossmoor detectives will probably visit the boy within the next day or two.
The case is under investigation, Kamleiter said, and further developments are not likely until next week at the earliest.
“Right now we are just watching the boy’s condition,” he said.