School teacher in China arrested after alleged hair pulling punishment scalped child and left him with internal bleeding
- Student was being punished after talking in class in incident that left him with swelling and bleeding in his brain
- Doctors had to remove a litre of blood from the boy’s brain after his mother took him to hospital
A primary school teacher in central China has been arrested for allegedly pulling the hair of a nine-year-old boy so hard the child’s skull was partially scalped and left him with severe internal bleeding and swelling.
The teacher, surnamed Chang, violently pulled the boy’s hair after noticing him talking in class, news platform thecover.cn reported.
Police in Pingdingshan in Henan province placed Chang in detention last Saturday, the report said. Doctors said the boy’s scalp and skull were separated in the incident and that the bleeding had filled part of his brain. More than 1 litre of blood was drawn out of his brain using syringes in seven separate surgical procedures.
The incident occurred on March 5 at Xinhua Road Elementary School. When Chang found the boy, a grade-three pupil surnamed Yuan, and two of his classmates talking in his class, he punished them by dragging them from their seats by their hair to the front of the class.
“My son’s hair is short. When the teacher pulled his hair for the first time, my boy stepped back. The teacher, perhaps thinking he was resisting, then pulled his hair again,” the boy’s mother said.