In suburban Houston last week, assistant baseball coach Michael Shott reportedly was attacked by four middle school students from Aragon Middle School on Feb. 10 and suffered a broken arm. Shott allegedly was attacked for telling students they couldn’t ride dirt bikes or ATVs on school property, according to reports.
“He’s doing fine. He’s at home. He has a broken arm, but the kids said that he’s doing what he’s always done and he’s fine,” his mother Peggy Shott said. “The reason it happened to him was because he was doing his job. He stopped the kids. Well, there was only one kid at first. The reason the others came back is because they didn’t like him stopping them.”
The students that attacked Shott interrupted a baseball practice at Langham Creek High School, where he teaches, on their dirt bikes. He told them to stop interrupting and they chased him and broke his arm. All the teens involved were all taken into juvenile custody; it’s unknown at this time if they have been charged.
A group of Texas teenagers believed to be friends of the juveniles taken into custody threatened to shoot up Langham Creek High School, causing a lockdown.
The threat was made on social media and students were not allowed to leave classes or enter the campus without showing proper identification.
Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District superintendent Mark Henry confirmed that the school received threats of further violence via social media and security officers were sent to the school.
“Our campuses must be the safest places in our community for students, staff and visitors,” school officials said in a statement Friday. “We will not tolerate anyone compromising the safe environment of our campuses, and will address violations to the greatest extent possible.”
Students told ABC13 Shott was responding to a bunch of the kids making noise on their dirt bikes.
“I heard there were kids doing donuts and stuff, causing a ruckus with their dirt bikes,” Logan Wisniewski said. “The coach wasn’t happy with it. He asked them politely to stop doing that. The kids weren’t having that, so they decided to jump him.”
This type of behavior by children is terrible on so many levels. When someone resorts to physical violence because they didn’t get their way, it’s dangerous. When an entire mob of kids decides to chase and beat down an adult that’s even worse.
Of course there should be punitive measures taken, but there should be some examination into root causes. Was this simply a case of kids taking things way too far? Or is a culture of violence persisting in the school district? Were there warning signs teachers and administrators missed?
The high school students that made the threats via social media also need to be spoken to about the seriousness of threatening violence via social media.
This is a serious incident and needs to be handled as such by all relevant parties. Parents, teachers and school officials have to work together to not only ensure situations like this don’t happen again.
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