South Philly High: The District's alternate reality
by Helen Gym on Apr 26 2010
A few weeks back I wrote a post about Lin De Liu, a 16-year-old boy who enrolled at South Philadelphia High School post-December 3 and who was assaulted last month in a bathroom stall.
Monday’s Inquirer story gives an update on Lin De’s condition:
The incident lasted only seconds, but for Liu, a 16-year-old immigrant from China, the consequences have been profound.
His vision frequently turns blurry, to where he can't count fingers held in front of his face. He forgets conversations that occurred moments earlier, and sometimes struggles to identify everyday objects, like the chicken on his dinner plate. He gets sudden nose bleeds. . .
Liu was examined at Chinatown Medical Services on March 25, where the doctor wrote he had blurred vision and should be seen at a hospital. The next day, Liu underwent a CT scan of the head. A week later, a sudden loss of vision sent him to the emergency room for a second CT scan. More tests are pending.
Liu worries that his condition is permanent - and that he could be hurt even worse at school.
"I have this great fear that someone will attack me again," he said.
The family has amassed thousands of dollars in medical bills but that pales in comparison to the family’s stress.
"I'm so upset," Liu's mother, Hui Qin Chen, said through a translator as she wiped tears from her eyes. "I don't know what to do."
The medical records and at least one eyewitness statement make clear what happened: a kid kicked in a bathroom stall door that smacked Lin De’s head against the wall.
But for the School District an entirely different story has cropped up a month after the attack – and delivered only to the media. No one from the School District, for the record, has formally contacted the family to explain what they found, clarify discrepancies, or even reach out and help the family deal with their son’s injuries.
According to the District:
The incident was apparently a "careless" accident, not an assault. Funny though that kicking in doors isn’t exactly a passive act, and an eyewitness’ account that the boys were cracking up at Lin De’s pain doesn’t exactly indicate insouciance. The District bases this assessment on apparently no
