Family says high school tried to cover-up brutal attack on black student

Jan 15, 2016

A 16-year-old high school student’s family is filing court papers, alleging that a Long Island school neglected to step in and prevent a racially-motivated attack by a white student and that they helped to cover up the incident.

According to an NBC investigative report, Zion Guzman-Milton had to have 32 stitches in his head in 2014 after an emergency surgery to ease the swelling in his brain following a knockout punch delivered by a white student at Valley Stream South High School. Guzman-Milton suffered a hemorrhage and skull fracture because of the attack, which the family claims was racially motivated.

Guzman-Milton said that the attack occurred when he was getting his book out of his locker and the other student approached him and began calling him racially insulting names. When Guzman-Milton tried to walk away, the other student hit him, and the next thing he knew, he was in the nurse’s office.

Guzman-Milton’s family claims in the papers that the school did nothing to notify authorities, and that they had to call an ambulance themselves as well as get the police involved, NBC reports. Father Chris Milton said that the principal was furious when police arrived with the ambulance.

“This lady was very disrespectful, saying that we did something to them as opposed to something happening in the school to our son,” he said.

What’s more, Guzman-Milton saw his attacker back in school after only a few weeks and has been bullied and harassed about the incident ever since. He and his family say they are speaking out now to try to bring the conversation about race to the forefront before things get worse.