The assistant principal who was airlifted to a hospital after she was attacked by a student earlier this month said she is blind in her right eye after it was knocked out of the socket in an attack.
Candra Rogers was attacked at Collins Intermediate School when a behavioral teacher at the school called administrators on the radio for assistance with an aggressive student.
Rogers said she was the first administrator to arrive in the classroom and encountered students and the teacher outside the room. She said one student who the aggressive student assaulted was holding his head. The aggressive student remained in the room.
“I entered and found the student was still irate and found the room ransacked with overturned furniture. I knew I had to be as calm as possible and I spoke lowly and slowly,” Rogers said.
Rogers said the aggressive student picked up a chair and acted like he was going to throw it.
“He finally did throw it at me but I caught it mid-air. He picked up another chair to throw at me when another assistant principal entered the room. I used the first chair to block the second. He picked up a third and threw it at the other assistant principal and I used that initial chair to block the one that he threw at her,” she said.
The student then threw a wooden hanger at Rogers and she “could not stop it fast enough.”
“The hanger hit me on my right eye and knocked it out of my socket,” Rogers said. “I grabbed my head while blood was pouring out of my head and stumbled out through the classroom door.”
She was airlifted to Parkland Medical Center in Dallas. She underwent surgery and doctors were able to put her eye back, but “believe the damage is permanent.”
“I have been blinded,” she said.
Rogers said she still requires additional surgeries to repair her eyelid and doctors may have to remove her right eye.
“This tragedy affected, not only my husband, my children, family and friends, but also negatively affected my school district and community,” she said.
The incident has been referred to the Navarro County District Attorney’s Office and the Juvenile Probation Department, according to Corsicana ISD.
The school district “anticipates the DA’s office will take additional steps to address the student’s action through the juvenile court system.”
Credit: Joe Villasana & Amanda Alvarad0/KWTX-Corsicana, TX via WKYT-Lexington
