Parents upset over needle at school

Teresa Hinds

Thursday, Dec. 18, 1997 | 10:03 a.m.

Parents of a 12-year-old boy who was stuck by a classmate with a hypodermic needle are angry that the Clark County School District did not directly inform them of the incident or file a report with school police.

The boy is now undergoing inoculation shots for hepatitis B and testing for HIV.

Rania and Reginald Moore Sr. say their Gibson Middle School son was accidentally stuck with the needle Dec. 3 while in class.

Two days later, the Moores filed a report with school police. This is an action the district should have taken immediately, they say, because their son was injured with an object that should never have been brought to school.

"They keep telling me it was an accident," Rania Moore said. "What if my son was 'accidentally' shot with a handgun, would that be different?"

Ray Willis, spokesman for the school district, said the investigation showed that there was no harm intended to the Moores' son. He said it wasn't necessarily the school administration's responsibility to contact police.

Willis did say, however, that the district will recommend to juvenile court officials that misdemeanor charges be brought against the youth who brought the needle to school.

"I don't know that there's an absolute, iron-clad procedure" to handle an occurrence like this, Willis said. "There's more of a common-sense approach, based on our policy of doing everything we can to assure the safety of the students and assess the potential health risks."

Beyond that, Willis said, contacting school police is "an option that's available" but not an option that is exercised every time something happens.

Rania Moore doesn't buy the district's "common-sense" policy.

"There should definitely be some procedure in place, especially when there's a health risk to the students," Rania Moore said. "They should have set-in-stone rules for things like this."

According to Rania Moore, her son noticed a friend standing next to him in class drop something "shiny" on the floor. When the friend bent over to pick up the needle, her son told her he was accidentally stuck in the bend of the left arm when the student straightened up.

"Then he told my son, 'My friend just used that for drugs,'" Rania Moore said. "Now we have to live with that."

She also said she was told by school administrators that prior to the incident the needle had been taken out on the school's basketball court and stomped by several students.

"This is very upsetting," Rania Moore said. "We don't know where that needle has been."

The victim's father said they were never directly notified of the incident.

Instead, the victim's grandmother, who was listed as an emergency contact, was notified, Reginald Moore Sr. said. "What I want to know is why we were never called. We were both right here (at home) and they never called us.

"They told (the grandmother) my son had been stabbed with a syringe, that everything was OK, he wasn't infected and there was no need for us to come to the school," he said. "They didn't even send him to the hospital" for HIV and Hepatitis B tests."

Reginald Moore Sr. believes he and his wife should have been directly notified and his son should have been taken to the hospital by school officials for the appropriate tests.

Rania Moore said after speaking to the boy's grandmother they immediately went to the school and took their soon to UMC Quick Care, where he received the first of a series of Hepatitis B shots and HIV tests, which she said their son will have to undergo for the next 1 1/2 years.

Reginald Moore Sr. said everyone is relieved the first HIV test came back negative, but he still worries about the future.

"You just have to keep your hopes up," he said. "Seven years down the line my first son could come down with the virus" that causes AIDS.

"He's scared, and I am too," Reginald Moore said. "He just kind of dropped his head and said, 'Dad, I'm not going to get this, am I?'"

School police have the needle in their evidence vault. The needle was not taken to a lab for testing, but Jane Shunney, senior public health nurse for the Clark County Health District, said that is not part of the protocol recommended by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Shots for hepatitis B and testing for HIV, which the family is undergoing, is the standard protocol, she said.

Shunney added that the staff at the health district is available for consultation with people who find themselves in similar situations.

"Ever since this happened, he doesn't want to go back to school," Rania Moore said of her son. "He's scared. He has headaches all the time and his stomach hurts. I know it's all because of what happened."

Rania Moore said she spent days on the phone with countless school district administrators trying to find someone who knew just how the situation should have been handled.

Besides the potential health hazard to her son, "the most upsetting thing is how the school district is handling it. I've never gotten such a run-around in my life," she said.

Rania Moore wants the public to know what happened to her son in the hopes that solid guidelines to handle this type of situation will be established and that a more dedicated effort will be made to educate students and staff about the health hazards associated with needle sticks.

Willis said if a school administrator is faced with a similar situation in the future, "I would hope that an administrator would weigh heavily in favor of an investigation if it were called for."