Parents angry after daughter injured on school field trip

Thursday, January 11, 2018
DeKALB, Ill. (WLS) -- The parents of a DeKalb second grader are angry after their daughter was injured during a school sledding outing Tuesday.

Her mother, Monica Jefferson, claims she never received a call from school officials until after she was on her way to the hospital.
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Second grader Maya Jefferson stayed home from school Wednesday while she recovered from a sledding accident.

"I got scared and said 'I wanna get off,' but there was no way to stop the sled until the sled turned over and I fell off," said second grader Maya Jefferson.

Maya's parents gave permission for a school field trip on Tuesday for sledding at Russell Woods in Genoa, Illinois.

Maya Jefferson had not been sledding before and she didn't want to go, but was told to play with the other kids. She said the first time down was okay but the second time an older child got on the sled with her and a teacher gave them a big push.



"She pushed me too fast," said Maya.
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"I thought it was going to be like, not going downhill, but like little kids running with a little board or something, plastic and sliding on the ground slow. I didn't think they was going to get pushed down anything," said father Parrise Jefferson.

"When I went down some other kid turned their sled over and bumped into us and then I fell and some other kid fell on me and then my face hit the ground hard," said Maya.

"I'm mad because they didn't call a paramedic or anything. They didn't call me or their dad," said mother Monica Jefferson.

Maya's mother says an adult on the trip sent a photo of the girl's face but no one from the school called her until after the field trip and after she picked Maya up at the Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School en route to the emergency room.

"When I saw her, the first thing was tears, there were tears non-stopping," said Monica Jefferson.
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Monica Jefferson says she was given a report of the incident in which the Principal indicates she witnessed the incident and cleaned the wounds and treated them with Neosporin.



A school district administrator tells us they are aware of the situation and it's being addressed.

"Don't nobody need to be treated like how my daughter was treated, because it was wrong," said Parrise Jefferson.

Maya said her face and lip still hurt and she doesn't want to go back to school.

Her parents are also hesitant to send her back.
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