Tuesday, at Mills Have Elementary School in Sherwood Park, a Grade 5 class was let out a little early to get some time on the playground before the end of the day.
For Richard Stemme, the fun quickly turned dangerous. The 10-year-old boy was swinging high on the swings and lost his grip.
“I didn’t hold onto the swings hard enough, so I fell backwards,” Richard said.
“I landed on the ground… and stopped the fall with my arms.”
“I ran to the substitute teacher and I sat down. She told me to take off my glove and I did that. She asked me to move any of my fingers and I could only move my pointer finger.
“Then she said that I am fine and that sitting down won’t help.”
Richard waited near the substitute teacher until the final bell rang.
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“I cried the whole time.”
He said the teacher told him to go home. So he started the 15-minute walk. Richard said it was the worst pain he has ever experienced.
He said when the pain got really bad, he had to sit down about halfway home. When he finally go to the front door, he wasn’t able open it. Luckily, he was able to get in through the back entry.
“He is saying, ‘My arm hurts,'” Richard’s mom Viktorija Sketika said. “I am a health-care aide myself, so it took less that a minute to assess, and his arm is not OK.”
“The way he looked — pale and all in tears — there was no doubt, we are going to the hospital.”
Richard suffered from two broken wrists, and one was dislocated. Both his arms below the elbow are in a cast.
Sketika doesn’t understand why her son wasn’t taken to the office and why she wasn’t called.
“It’s common sense. If a child is not calming down… and keeps crying, I don’t know how many minutes he was standing waiting for the bell to ring, but those minutes he was constantly crying, any other parent, anyone would say, ‘he’s not OK.’
“Bring him to the principal’s office, call the parents, because he is not calming down and he is continuously crying and his skin colour changed. I don’t understand that.
“I went to the principal (the next day) and he didn’t know about it. The teacher did not report to him there was an accident.”
Elk Island Public Schools said in a statement:
“EIPS administration was made aware that on Jan. 19, a student from Mills Haven Elementary sustained an injury on the playground.
“The news of this situation is very concerning for the school and the division, as the safety and well-being of our students is paramount. Division personnel are reviewing the incident.”
Sketika said they have contacted police. RCMP told Global News they are not investigating because the incident isn’t criminal.
Richard will be staying home from school until at least one arm is taken out of the cast.
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