Texas Jury Awards $68,000 to Black Girl Who Said Classmates Wrapped Rope Around Her Neck
Style Magazine Newswire | 11/9/2018, 8:17 p.m.
A private school in Texas was ordered to pay $68,000 in damages to a black girl’s family two years after she returned from a sixth-grade school trip with severe rope burns around her neck. In 2016, the girl’s family sued the school in Waco, Tex., after she said three white classmates had wrapped the rope around her neck and dragged her to the ground. Arguing that the injury was the result of bullying, the lawyer for the family said he asked for at least $5.3 million in damages. The school maintained that her injury was an accident. The girl, identified only as K.P. in court documents, was 12 at the time and attending Live Oak Classical School in Waco when she took an end-of-year school trip to Johnson City, Tex. Upon her return, her mother, Sandy Rougely, saw her daughter’s injury and learned that it had been caused by a rope, Ms. Rougely said in a 2016 interview.