Student beaten unconscious in alleged school bus attack
By Kevin Spradlin
PeeDeePost.com
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At about 7:16 a.m. Tuesday, Linda Rogich heard this play on her answering machine. The message concerned her 13-year-old son, Daniel Ray Collins.
“He’s been in a fight on the bus and his nose is bleeding pretty heavily,” said an administrator’s voice from Washington Street Elementary School who was listening to the bus driver chatter on the school band radio. “The sheriff’s department and the rescue squad is on the way.”
Only 15 minutes earlier, Daniel, a seventh grade student at Ellerbe Middle School, had left his Millstone Road home and boarded bus No. 200 to school. He never made it.
Despite working the night shift, the message woke up Rogich fully and quickly. The bus driver had pulled the bus, which carries only middle school students, over on Firetower Road to address the issue. The bus driver first called 911, then tried to call Rogich. The bus driver told Rogich she didn’t see much; it was still dark at the time, but she pulled the bus over as soon as she was alerted that something was happening.
Rogich arrived on scene. Daniel and two other boys were sitting along the road on an embankment. The police were already there. Daniel, she said, was bruised in front of his head and was complaining about soreness in the back of his head. Rogich said she gave the sheriff’s deputy her information and left.
“I didn’t stick around long enough to find out what transpired,” Rogich said. “I took him straight to the hospital.”
Mallory Brown, Richmond County Schools public relations director, said witness statements indicate only one other student was involved. The was no camera on the bus. Daniel thought there was — and said that it was broken — but Brown said that wasn’t the case.
“We regret any instance in which students resort to hitting,” Brown said in an email to The Pee Dee Post, “as safety is our No. 1 concern.”
That intent apparently failed to protect Daniel on Tuesday. From the emergency department at FirstHealth Richmond Memorial Hospital in Rockingham, Rogich said doctors diagnosed Daniel with tissue bruising in his nose and a concussion “from the back where they were hitting him so hard … which kind of worried me, because they were already bruising that fast.”
Dennis Quick, executive director of Richmond County Schools, visited Rogich while he was at the hospital and talked with Daniel about the incident. He followed up with a voicemail message. Quick said he was following up to “see how everything turned out … Hope all is going well.”
Daniel, who is autistic and suffers from a number of other medical issues, is able to tell the story quite clearly — at least, as much as he can remember.
“I was sitting on the bus,” Daniel said. “They were calling me names.”
There were three students involved at this point, Daniel said. “When I turned around to look … I got punched in the face.”
That punch knocked him out, he said.
“When I came to … they were punching me so hard it felt like a train was coming over me. I put my hands over my head and waited until the bus could slow down and stop. I remember the bus driver … yelling, telling them to get off of me.”
Nearly 30 hours after the incident, “my face is hurting me,” Daniel said. “They hit me in the chest. I could tell, ’cause my chest is hurting this morning.”
Daniel said this is not the first time he’s been picked on at school or on the way to school. It is, though, the first time it’s turned violent.
Daniel said he’s tried to tell teachers at school but so far, “no one has done anything about it. Nobody helped me.”
To hear Daniel say that concerns his mother. A lot.
“It hurts,” Rogich said. “Daniel is special. He has autism … so many things I can’t diagnose. He’s not like a normal child. He cannot process things just right. When he gets upset, he starts breaking down. He’s come this far.”
Daniel is a seventh-grader in a regular classroom, Rogich said. He’s a good student, regularly earning As and Bs on his report cards.
With Danie’s conditions, Rogich knew early on she needed help. A Richmond County family offered to help. For two years, Daniel lived with Tom and Lisa Luckey through the North Carolina Foster Care program. They were able to give Daniel the tough love he sometimes needed.
“I had no clue which way to go with his special needs,” Rogich said.
Now that Daniel has come so far, Rogich is afraid this event will set him back.
“He fears for his life,” she said of the idea of Daniel returning to school.
“I want everybody to know,” she said of an issue that doesn’t get talked about much in a public forum — not specifics, anyway. “Last year, he was bullied as well. He and my other son. With my other son, he retaliated and protected himself and got suspended. When they stand up for themselves, after being bullied for so long and they can’t take it … (and the) other kids are not getting touched.”
Rogich is speaking out because she wants to people to know that bullying remains a problem in Richmond County Schools.
“I would like to know, is anything being done” to the students involved.
The case remains under investigation by the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office. It has been assigned to Det. Stephen Gerald.