The mother of a 9-year-old Massachusetts girl is fuming after Veterans Memorial School personnel failed to call 911 following her daughter’s fall from the monkey bars that resulted in a broken arm.
Jenn D’eon told WHDH she received a phone call from the school nurse, who said her daughter, Ally, had hurt her arm, it didn’t look good, and she needed to come pick her up.
According to D’eon, she had no idea of the extent of the break until she saw Ally in the school nurse’s office.
“It didn't look like an arm. It looked like a wing completely bent in," she said. "I just started crying."
In the emergency room, Jenn D’eon said she was told by a doctor that first aid 101 dictates in the case of a clear break, with a clear deformity, “you call for an ambulance … you call 911.”
D’eon told WHDH the principal at Veterans Memorial claimed she was following district policy.
“My husband said ‘I’d like to see that policy,’ and she said she didn’t have it,” D’eon explained.
In a letter to the D’eons, the principal reiterated there was not a clear policy in place, and that decisions regarding when to call 911 are made on a case-by-case basis.
WHDH reports the superintendent of Saugus Public Schools issued a statement in which he stood by the school’s decision: “Parents were informed immediately. The medical staff is fully qualified to make appropriate assessment and recommendation for treatment in such instances and did so accordingly.”
The situation mirrors an incident that occurred at Deltona High School in Florida earlier this month. Seventeen-year-old Kayla Marie Carrera’s hair was pulled out during woodshop class after it became caught in a drill press machine, resulting in bruising and swelling. Her mother, Lissette Carrera, was furious that no one at the school bothered to call 911.
“At all cost speak to an adult, call 911 first and then if they deem that it’s okay, that she should be discharged as she was, then that’s okay. But I would rather err to the side of caution,” Carrera said. “Someone there should have made the judgment call to call 911. She shouldn’t have called for help herself.”