The mother of an 8-year-old South Philadelphia elementary school student who says bullies cut off a chunk of her daughter’s hair is outraged that authorities haven’t responded.
Yamina Zahir said that her daughter Amina had been bullied by a group of girls at Commodore John Barry Elementary for more than a year.
The bullying reached a new low on Wednesday, April 24, when another girl used scissors to shear a quantity of Amina’s hair.
Despite complaints, neither the police nor the school district has taken action, Zahir claims.
Amina came home from school on April 24 with a large patch of hair missing from the back of her head. She told her mother that a classmate had cut her hair off with scissors.
Amina said she told her teacher, but the teacher took no action.
Zahir called the school and spoke with the teacher and the school counselor. Then, feeling that no one was taking the incident seriously, Zahir called the police.
“Nothing is happening. Nothing is being addressed,” Zahir told ABC News.
“Someone is really going to get hurt out of this situation. She could’ve stabbed my daughter. Anything could’ve happened. She cut my daughter’s hair off. Who would do something like that?”
Zahir has filed an official police report.
School District Offers No Remedies
The School District of Philadelphia did not immediately respond to Zahir’s report. Two days after the incident, Deputy Chief of Communications Lee Whack told ABC News: “The safety of our students is our number one priority. The school has investigated this matter. They found no evidence the hair cutting took place at the school. We at the school district take bullying very seriously. The school has no official reports of bullying involving this student.”
Bullying Victim Died in Houston on the Day of the Philadelphia Attacks
Bullying in school has been high on the agenda since 13-year-old Kashala Francis was fatally beaten by three classmates outside of Attucks Middle School, in Houston, Texas, on April 18, ABC News reported.
The seventh-grade student was kicked and punched in the head repeatedly in an assault which was captured on cell phone video. On Sunday, April 21, she lapsed into unconsciousness and was taken to the hospital, where doctors found that she had a brain tumor.
Francis died on the morning of April 24, a few hours before the attack in Philadelphia.
Kashala’s mother Mamie Jackson, asked ABC News, “So if she had a tumor in her head that we [didn’t know] about, and somebody repeatedly stomps and kicks and punches you in your head, you’re not even fighting back, is it going to be better, is it going to be worse?”
Until the autopsy is complete, doctors will not know what role the beating played in Francis’s death.
Ten-year-old Raniya Wright, of Walterboro, South Carolina, died on March 27 after sustaining a head injury in a school fight two days prior. In that case there had also been a year-long history of bullying, which had not been addressed.