Gym Teacher Arrested for Assault After Knocking Out a Student in Dodgeball
A Pennsylvania gym teacher is inÂ custody today, after witnesses claim he assaulted one of his students during his class. Mike OâMally, 38, has been teaching at the school for over 10 years and has never had any previously reported conduct incidents.According to police, the alleged assault tookÂ place during a morning gym class on Friday, butÂ OâMally is claiming that he didnât mean to harm his student.âI asked the kids what game they wanted to play, and they all agreed on dodgeball,â said OâMally. âWe began to play and the kids were having a blast, I was sitting on the sidelines at first, but then the kids started asking me to play so I decided to jump into the game. I started off playing slow and not really given much energy. Then one student began to get very cocky with me, and even started calling me names. I donât usually lose my temper since I deal with kids all day, Â and I know I should have gone about this another way, but I lost control.âOther pupils in the classÂ say that OâMally hit the student with theÂ dodgeball directly in the face, causing him to fly backwards and knock his head against the wall. The nurse was called, but as school nurses are the least-trained medical staff there is, they immediately took the unnamed, injured student to a nearby hospital. He had 10 staples in his head and is suffering from a concussion.âI do feel terrible, but I canât take back what I did. I hope the kid will be okay and Iâm sure he at least learned a lesson from this, in that it isnât wise to run your mouth, especially to adults. Obviously that kid is having a really bad upbringing at home. But hey, on the bright side, hits to the face in dodgeball are an automatic out, so technically he got me out, and his team won the game!âOâMallyâs lawyer, Bill S. Preston, Esq., says that he does not expect for his client to do any jail time. âHe may have hit the boy with the ball in anger, but they were still playing a game, and itâs not really that uncommon for a gym teacherâs balls to end up in the face of a student anyway. We donât expect he will serve any punishment for this crime.âÂ