HARRISONVILLE, Mo. — Police in Harrisonville are investigating an assault involving members of the Harrisonville Middle School football team. Police say the attack took place after practice outside the locker room.
Jami Turney’s son is on the Harrisonville 8th grade football team. She said she was shocked by what she learned Tuesday after picking her son up from football practice.
“I asked him how football went and he took his backpack off and his entire back is completely red and welted and nothing but bruising,” she explained.
Turney said her son wasn’t injured during practice, but afterwards, when he was ambushed outside of the locker room by some of the starters on the Harrisonville 8th grade football team.
“One of them came over to him and put his arm around him and asked him if he had ever been five starred. He said, ‘yes I have and it hurts so don’t do it.’ And he goes, ‘well, sorry about that.’ And that boy threw the first blow,” Turney said.
“Five staring,” Turney says, is when you rub your hands together causing friction, then hit someone hard enough to leave a bruise that is five fingers, in the shape of a star.
“He was not able to run away somewhere. Ten and 15 8th grade football players, they commenced to jumping him and beating him, punching him, smacking him,” the mom described.
She says the assault, that lasted about 10 minutes, moved into the locker room where a high school student broke it up. Turney later went to the police.
“They were definitely visible injuries that caused irritation to his skin, large welts on his skin the front, the back, his neck,” she explained.
Police say evidence they’ve uncovered during an investigation has led them to believe the boy’s story, and have presented evidence of simple assault against four Harrisonville 8th grade football players to the Cass County Prosecutor’s Office. Turney says Harrisonville school administrators are upset with her for going to the police, and have tried to downplay the assault as boys just horsing around.
“You can take the sheer evidence of the photos alone and it tells its own story, so it makes me angry, it makes me very disappointed in the school district my son attends,” Turney said.
Harrisonville school administrators declined to comment on this story, only saying that they will not talk about student discipline issues. Turney says not only did the students bully her son, but administrators did too, treating him like he did something wrong, instead of protecting him.
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