A Florida high school student says she was left with a concussion and bruised ribs after a teacher slammed her to the ground during a game of musical chairs.
Nyla Millikan, 16, said she was attending a pep rally at Westside High School when she decided to compete against a male teacher in the party game.
Shocking video shared online shows a man, identified by Duval County Public Schools as a teacher, approaching Millikan from behind as the music began. He then remained just inches behind her as the two circled a chair in the middle of the gym.
‘He was a little too close to me from the beginning, from behind,’ Millikan recounted to News4JAX.
When the music then stopped, Millikan could be seen lunging for the chair – causing the unidentified teacher to fall to the ground.
But as she began to sit down, the teacher pulled her from the chair and pushed her to the ground – causing her head to slam against the laminate flooring.
Two good Samaritans could then be seen rushing to help Millikan stand back up, while the teacher ran back to the chair and celebrated his win.
Millikan’s mother, Joanna, said school officials described the incident as a ‘scuffle’ when they called her that afternoon.
But she told First Coast News she realized something was seriously wrong when her daughter got in the car and was ‘crying and in pain.’
Joanna then ended up rushing her daughter to the emergency room for severe head and side pain.
There, medical examinations revealed that Nyla suffered from a concussion and bruised ribs – forcing the high school junior to miss classes this week.
The family is now preparing to sue school and Duval County Public School District officials over the incident, retaining attorney Gary Englander to represent them in court.
‘From the video, this incident should not have occurred,’ Englander said. ‘The teacher should never have put his hands on her and taken her to the ground.’
He added that his firm is ‘going to continue to work with the family and will take appropriate actions’ as Joanna pushes for justice and accountability for her daughter.
‘I want justice to be done because ain’t no teacher should be that close to a student they didn’t know,’ she explained.
‘Nobody should… ever have to deal with their kid going to the emergency room just for a teacher tackling their student on the ground over musical chairs,’ Joanna added.
She told News4JAX she has since had a productive conversation with the school’s principal.
‘He was a very nice, very nice principal,’ she recounted. ‘He sat down and talked to me and he said that measures are being taken, but he did say he watched a video himself and he said he did not expect that out of that young man.
‘He said he didn’t know what he was thinking.’
Officials at Duval County Public School District also told the local news outlets that the teacher has been reassigned to duties that do not include student contact while the district’s Office of Personnel Standards investigates.
But district officials also said that because it is an active investigation, they cannot provide any further details on the case.