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A Black student who alleged white classmates wrapped a rope around her neck and pulled her to the ground sued Live Oak Classical School in Waco, TX. A jury in the case has ordered the private school in Texas to pay $68,000 in damages to the student’s family according to The New York Times.

The student who was 12 at the time of the incident only identified as K.P. in court documents came home from a field trip with rope burns around her neck. The student’s mother Sandy Rougely learned her daughter injury was caused while her daughter was standing near a swing that was hanging from a tree and three white classmates, who frequently bullied her used a separate rope that was designed to pull the swing higher as a weapon that they put around K.P.’s neck and violently jerked her to the ground. However, school officials, believe that her injury was an accident.

The family’s attorney, Levi G. McCathern II, believes race played a role in the school’s inability to notify the student parents after the incident.

“If it had been a little white girl they would have been on the phone with her mother within the hour,” McCathern said.

David N. Deaconson the lawyer for the school in the case, denied the allegations that racism played a part in the incident. He asserted the student was injured as several children were pulling on the rope to raise the swing and when they let it go, the rope hit the girl in the neck.

The family asked for $5.3 million in damages but last week the jury ordered the school to pay $55,000 for the student’s physical pain and mental anguish, and $10,000 for disfigurement sustained and $3,000 for medical expenses.

“We were asking them to award symbolic damages to demonstrate the fact that the people of the state of Texas aren’t going to put up with that,” McCathern said.

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