SHELBY, N.C. — Family members of a 6-year-old girl said she is traumatized because she was hospitalized after another student at her school in Shelby wrapped a jump rope around her neck.
"I didn't do nothing to him," said Lesleigh Littlejohn, who attends Pinnacle Classical Academy.
She said she had to be checked out at the hospital because of bruising on her neck.
"God always wants us to forgive, but I don't think I can forgive," Lesleigh said.
Lesleigh said she was on the playground when a student used the jump rope to yank her by the neck.
"I kept on telling him, ‘Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.’ And then I yelled at him the second time," she said.
Lesleigh said other students and a teacher stopped the boy.
"It's not right,” said Brittany Houser, her mother. “Wrong is wrong. There is no way that they are going to make me feel like it's right."
Lesleigh's mother said doctors had to put dye in her daughter's veins to make sure they weren't damaged.
The family posted about the incident on Facebook and said the school wants to keep it hidden.
"I'm not hiding my child,” Houser said. “I'm not hiding anything that you let happen to her."
"I don't understand it," said Brawdus Littlejohn, her father.
The school's headmaster, Shelly Bullard, said Monday that the other 6-year-old student was swinging a plastic rope like a lasso and wasn't trying to hurt anyone.
"I am so sorry that this incident happened at all, but it was not racial motivated,” Bullard said. “There was no noose. There was no tying of a knot. It was a poor choice by a child."
Bullard said Lesleigh was seen on surveillance video dancing an hour later, and that is why officials didn’t rush to notify her parents.
School officials said people on Facebook are targeting the other child.
"There have been threats put on this child and his family on social media," Bullard said.
Lesleigh's father said he doesn't think people should target the kid.
School officials said they can’t release information about any disciplinary action because of a student confidentially policy.
However, the headmaster said normally, in a case like that, the student is suspended.
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