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Mother of injured boy plans to sue school system

By BRADY DENNIS and THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published April 26, 2005

TAMPA - The mother of a 6-year-old boy hit by a car after he ran from his St. Petersburg school earlier this month gave notice Tuesday that she plans to sue the Pinellas County school district.

E'Traveon Johnson, a kindergartener at Fairmount Park Elementary, left through a set of glass doors and was struck by a car minutes later as he tried to cross Fifth Avenue S at 41st Street.

He remained in critical condition Tuesday at All Children's Hospital.

"Where in any school in America does a 6-year-old or 5-year-old get to walk through the halls by themselves, unattended? Something is wrong," said Chantelle Ross, the boy's mother. "Where were the adults? Where was the supervision?"

Ross and her attorney, Edgar Guzman, also suggested a possible link between E'Traveon's accident and the March 14 handcuffing of a 5-year-old girl at the same school.

A video of the handcuffing has received worldwide attention in recent days. Another video - that of E'Traveon running out the door nearly four weeks after the handcuffing - was made from digital surveillance images at the school.

"I don't know what the link could be, but is there fear (at the school)?" Ross asked during a news conference in Guzman's Tampa office. "Is there some fear (among students) that, possibly, if I'm bad or if something goes wrong, someone will put handcuffs on me?"

She said her son had never mentioned handcuffing or displayed any fear of school. She said he was shy and timid, not the type of boy to run out of school.

"If you look at the video, my son is definitely running from something. He is definitely in a state of fear," Ross said.

Said Pinellas schools superintendent Clayton Wilcox: "I absolutely understand that this mother is going to be looking for any possible solution."

But he said he did not see a link between the handcuffing and E'Traveon's decision to flee the school. So far, he said, the district has concluded that no adult played a role in causing the boy to run.

"We have looked carefully and we continue to look at it, and we don't see anything like that," he said.

Wilcox has said an investigation turned up no lapses by the school staff in the accident.

Speaking at the news conference, Guzman speculated that something unusual happened during the 22 seconds when E'Traveon disappeared from view of the school's surveillance cameras.

"There's something in those 22 seconds that prompted him to leave," he said. But he was careful not to accuse the school of threatening students with handcuffs or alleging that had any role in E'Traveon's accident.

"At this time, we're not alleging the two incidents are linked," he said, adding,"If there was a lack of supervision, then someone has to be held accountable for that." Guzman described Ross as an "excellent mother" who walked her son to his bus stop each day and kissed him goodbye. He also said Ross is considering starting a national organization called E'Traveon that would report "any violations in any educational organization worldwide."

"Sort of an organization like MADD," Guzman said.

Ross declined to discuss her son's condition in detail on Tuesday. She said he remains in a "coma-like state" and can't respond to her.

Even if he does pull through, she said, "He has a lot of trials ahead of him, a lot of things wrong."

[Last modified April 26, 2005, 19:35:02]