South Carolina parents reeling from the death of a 5th grader say the school board isn't providing enough answers to questions about what happened.
Superintendent Franklin Foster said that the district is assisting the Colleton County Sheriff's Office with the investigation into the incident. The district said that Raniya "suffered injuries after a fight occurred in the classroom" and was airlifted to a hospital.
Parents say members of the school board are avoiding them and officials are providing no further information about what happened.
The sheriff's office said that no weapons were involved. The other girl involved in the fight is under investigation; she could face severe punishment, Buckner said.
“How egregious the act was, whether or not there was a lot of planning beforehand, if they make that decision, they could be tried as an adult,” he said. Employees at the school could be held responsible if they deviated from school procedures.
William Bowman, a member of the Colleton County School Board, said that the board is pushing to get money to ramp up safety measures in schools.
“We’re going to have to look at this situation and see if there’s any avenues we can take in order to make our schools even safer,” Bowman added.
“But I am going to speak to everyone and answer everyone’s questions to get down to the bottom of this,” she said.
Family members of other students in the district said there had been bullying concerns.
“They’re telling the proper adults, but the adults aren’t handling it," said Cynthia Salley, who has nieces and nephews in the school system.
"The weird thing about bullying is there's no true definition of what bullying is," Bowman said. "I want to see if we can put together some type of task force or community group, to see if we can use information gleaned from our community and educators and professionals and stakeholders, to see if we can actually be maybe on the forefront. Maybe we can be pioneers, to create and establish a denotation for bullying."
Bowman acknowledged anger in the community over what happened and encouraged people to pray.
"We're still trying to recover emotionally from this tragedy. Not only am I trying to recover individually, but also as a father, a board member and a leader in the community," he said. "Anytime something happens at a school, you’re going to have that public reaction of fear, and rightfully so."