A New Mexico school district is in hot water after a high school teacher allegedly brought swords on campus to have students use the weapons to fight one another — a questionable decision that left one student injured, according to a lawsuit from the injured student’s family.
The incident was caught on camera, according to the lawsuit filed on Feb. 23 against the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) and the teacher the family claims is responsible.
It occurred during a chemistry class at Volcano Vista High School on May 2, 2022, according to KRQE-TV.
A video clip from the news outlet shows students, with their faces blurred out, inside the classroom approaching one another with swords as a countdown clock appears on a screen behind them. The sounds of the swords clashing against themselves can also be heard in the clip.
One of the students involved reportedly received a deep cut on her wrist as a result of the sword fighting, resulting in a trip to the emergency room, according to the family’s attorneys.
Her injuries, which included severed nerves and tendons, resulted in her needing to have surgery and suffering permanent damage to the wrist of her dominant hand, the attorneys say.
“Not only did this teacher and APS not protect this child, but actively put her in harm’s way, actively created this danger and put deadly weapons right into these student’s hands — and exactly what could reasonably be anticipated is what happened,” attorney Jessica Hernandez told the station.
The lawsuit states the teacher informed the students that she had a “surprise” for class that day and took out the two weapons, according to the news outlet.
The Albuquerque Public Schools handbook considers weapons to be “a firearm, any type of gun, knife, club, firecracker, explosive, spoked wristband, chains or other item that may cause or is intended to cause injury or death.”
After bringing out the swords, the instructor then turned a timer on, told students to push away the desks and had them fight each other in turns using the swords, the lawsuit states.
The video clip shown on KRQE-TV was captured on a cellphone by the victim who suffered a wrist injury shortly before she was called to sword fight, the attorneys say.
“We don’t know what was going through [the teacher’s] mind. We had no idea what would cause a teacher to think this was a good idea,” Hernandez said.
The lawsuit claims an incident report revealed that, according to Volcano Vista’s assistant principal, the teacher named in the lawsuit had brought swords to class as part of a lesson covering the science of metal and melding.
The assistant principal, also named in the suit, allegedly answered “no” when asked if the injury counted as a school rule violation, the news outlet reported.
“The incident report that he filled out really seems like it’s trying to deflect responsibility away from the district to sweep this under the rug rather than doing a thorough investigation to find out exactly why and how one of their students had been so seriously hurt,” Hernandez added in the interview.
Meanwhile, Albuquerque Public Schools has said the teacher being sued, who was first hired as a special education teacher in 2021, was terminated in 2022, according to the news outlet.
