'The school should have called an ambulance,' mom outraged after daughter's head injury at LaVille Elementary

 

LAKEVILLE, Ind.-- Alexis Barger got a call from LaVille Elementary School Friday, where her six-year-old daughter Paisleigh attends first grade.

"They contacted me and told me Paisleigh had bumped heads with another student at recess," Barger said.

They explained Paisleigh had a bloody nose and a bump on her forehead. But upon arrival, Barger said she was shocked to see her daughter's state.

"She was nodding, in and out, couldn't keep her eyes open," she said.

The call came from a school counselor, not a school nurse, asking Barger to take Paisleigh home.

"I just left, because I knew-- and as soon as I got outside, I called my sister, and I was like, 'you need to come get the other kids, she has to go to the hospital immediately, it's way more serious than what they made it seem,'" Barger said.

As they're making their way, Paisleigh's condition gets worse.

"I actually made it 10, almost 10 minutes down the road, and she started to be unresponsive and puking all over herself," she said. "So, I pulled over and called 911."

She waited six agonizing minutes for an ambulance to get to her.

"Six minutes and it felt like three hours because she's sitting there puking on herself and not answering me," Barger said.

But finally, an ambulance got to them.

"The paramedic in the ambulance that met me on the side of the road and picked her up immediately told me that the school should have called an ambulance," Barger said.

Paisleigh spent the night at the hospital and her mom learned the extent of her injuries.

"She has a skull fracture that starts in the middle of her forehead, all the way down through her nasal cavity, and the orbital bone is fractured under her eye," she said. "She has a concussion, and she has trace amounts of bleeding in her brain from the skull fracture."

Paisleigh is now home and will not go to school until she recovers from her concussion, but Barger is furious.

"She should have had an ambulance called," she said. "I fill out that paperwork at the beginning of the year for a reason, and to them, they're kind of just brushing it off like she broke her finger or something and my daughter, she could have died. If I had brought her home like the school counselor suggested, she probably would have gone to bed and not woken up."

The hospital called child protective services, Barger said, to investigate whether Paisleigh did in fact get her injuries from running into another student at recess, and that appears to be the case.

Barger is demanding an answer for why a school nurse was not there and why an ambulance was not called.

"It is not a bad school, I have never had an issue with that school. I went there and graduated from there. It is a great school. It is an awesome school. But the fact that an ambulance wasn't called is what I'm upset and I'm mad about," Barger said. "Because of the severity of her injuries, and me going in there and knowing right off the bat that she should've been in the hospital, anybody in there should've known that."

ABC57 called the Union-North United School Corporation superintendent and went to their office, where we were told the superintendent was out and they had no comment.

Barger said she also hasn't heard from the superintendent but said the principal of LaVille Elementary and a couple others called to check in on Paisleigh.