Bullies at Fort Worth private school injure student in TikTok prank, lawsuit says
Three All Saints Episcopal School students lured a fourth student to participate in a TikTok challenge this month that became a catastrophic assault, leaving the boy unconscious for several minutes, temporarily paralyzed and with fractured vertebrae, according to a lawsuit filed this week.
The private school in west Fort Worth was negligent in its handling of the assault, which happened in a hallway during lunchtime, and could have prevented it, the lawsuit alleges. All Saints allows and ignores a culture of bullying, the lawsuit alleges.
The injured student is 16. He is referenced in the lawsuit by his initials. The plaintiff is James Fulton, the student’s father. The suit was filed in state district court in Tarrant County.
Megan Fuhrman, an All Saints spokesperson, did not respond on Friday to a reporter’s questions about the allegations in an email and telephone message.
The student who was injured was subjected to other instances of bullying before the assault on May 7, according to the lawsuit filed by Mollie and Boston Mallory, the plaintiff’s attorneys.
The Fulton family met with All Saints administrators at least three times to discuss the ongoing bullying of their son, the lawsuit says. At the most recent meeting, about two months before the assault, the boy’s parents asked whether the school could keep their son safe and warned that the bullying would escalate to violence, according to the lawsuit.
Three weeks ago, during the lunch period at All Saints, a group of students played a prank known as the “skull crusher,” a viral TikTok challenge in which participants jump and are either caught by those around them or fall back onto a couch or soft surface.
The three students who assaulted the boy performed the prank six or seven times on other students, without intervention from All Saints, before they lured the subject of the May 7 prank into it under false pretenses, according to the lawsuit.
Immediately before the assault, the boy’s bullies positioned themselves on either side of him and kicked his legs out from under him mid-jump, causing him to land on his thoracic spine and strike his head on the ground. The boy was unconscious for several minutes and temporarily paralyzed, according to the lawsuit.
The perpetrators stood over the injured boy laughing, calling him a “loser,” and recording him on their phones, according to the lawsuit.
This video recording was posted online by the student who recorded it, the lawsuit says.
No All Saints faculty members were stationed in the hallway during the lunch period, the lawsuit says. No adult intervened during the setup, execution or immediate aftermath of the assault, according to the lawsuit.
The school’s head athletic trainer and another student moved the boy without a neck brace, without a spinal board and caused him to stand and walk despite three fractured vertebrae, according to the lawsuit.
“Unbelievably, the Upper School at All Saints does not have a nurse’s office,” the Mallorys wrote in the lawsuit.
The injured boy was taken to a small closet that has been converted into an administrative office, the lawsuit says.
“When the boy was there, he struggled to speak but was able to communicate he could not feel his feet. Despite that alarming report, the nurse — rather than recognizing the obvious hallmarks of a catastrophic spinal and neurological injury — asked another student and that student’s mother whether double vision and slurred speech were the boy’s baseline,” the Mallorys wrote in the lawsuit.
About 45 minutes after the injury, an All Saints employee called to summon an ambulance.
Head of School Wallace Worden went to the Fulton family’s home uninvited on the Saturday after the assault, according to the lawsuit.
“This is my fault. I knew this culture was at our school, and this is on me,” Worden said, according to the lawsuit.
