Statesville school settles lawsuit filed after ex-cop handcuffed child with autism
The City of Statesville has agreed to settle a lawsuit accusing a school resource officer of cruelly pinning an autistic 7-year-old to the ground for nearly 40 minutes when he had a meltdown at Pressly Alternative School.
Neither a former police officer or two educators involved were required to admit fault or pay into the settlement, according to their attorneys. Federal Judge Kenneth Bell approved the agreement Tuesday, said Michael Ingersoll, who represents the former officer. Details of the settlement haven’t yet been made public.
The child at the center of the lawsuit was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the time and has “significant impairments” affecting his ability to communicate and respond to directions, according to the lawsuit the boy’s mother filed in federal court.
In July 2018, the school board designed an individualized program for the child — identified in the lawsuit by the initials L.G. — for the coming school year. It placed him with a day treatment program at Pressly in a building separate from the rest of the school, the lawsuit states.
They also set up an intervention plan for when L.G. was struggling behaviorally, which included positive reinforcement and timed breaks but didn’t mention restraints or holds, according to the lawsuit.
In September 2018, L.G.’s mother told her son’s teachers that her son was starting a new medication that his doctor recommended, according to the lawsuit.
The next day, two Pressly educators took L.G. to a “quiet room” when he started acting up but told a school resource officer that they were okay and didn’t need any help with him, according to the lawsuit.
At the time, school protocol for police intervention required assistance from the day program team and advice from a program supervisor or clinical director, according to court records.
Body camera footage from the Sept. 11, 2018 incident shows former Statesville Police Officer Michael Fattaleh rushing through a classroom to take the 7-year-old boy from a teacher and teacher’s assistant who were sitting with the child.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Fattaleh said he stood by his actions given what he knew at the time about the child’s behavior and medical needs.
While the program staff didn’t request help from Fattaleh, he claimed to have seen the child spitting on the floor in the quiet room, according to the lawsuit. Fattaleh told The Observer on Tuesday that he actually saw the child spit on a teacher.
“I’ve got him,” Fattaleh says before handcuffing the boy’s arms behind his back and pressing him into the floor, according to the lawsuit. “He’s mine now.”
The video shows Fattaleh keeping the child in that position for 38 minutes – sometimes quietly, sometimes telling the boy that he “will be shortly” acquainted with the criminal justice system.
Once the child’s mother arrived to pick her son up, Fattaleh claimed that the boy had punched and kicked at him, according to the complaint. The video shows no such behavior.
When the woman picked her son up, he cried “Mommy, they broke my arms,” according to the lawsuit.
While the boy returned to class the next day, his mother wrote in the complaint, he was agitated and was restrained twice, at one point making enough noise in the hallway that his older brother overheard and tried to intervene, the lawsuit says. He didn’t return to the school after that.
The Statesville Police Department put Fattaleh on administrative leave shortly after the incident, which the State Bureau of Investigation looked into. Fattaleh hasn’t been criminally charged.
Fattaleh resigned from the department then worked as a substitute teacher at another school until a parent who saw the footage of him pinning the child complained to school officials, he said Tuesday.
“The most important thing at the end of the day is the kid,” Fattaleh told The Observer after the hearing. “I didn’t do anything with any intention to hurt him… I wasn’t some monster who decided to pick on a child one day.”
Attorneys for the mother of the child and the two educators shown in the video couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 12:30 PM.
