There are a lot of things that Mitch Carter does not remember about the day of the pep rally in 2010, he told a California court.
Those towels, he said, were to clean up his blood.
“She looks at me and gives me those brown rags … those towels, she like throws them down and says, ‘I’ll be back, I’m going to finish the rally,’ then leaves me,” Carter testified, according to the Bakersfield Californian. “I’m by myself, bloody in the stairwell.”
Carter was a 17-year-old old student when he wore a chicken costume at a Bakersfield High School pep rally in 2010. A complaint filed in Kern County Superior Court alleged that Carter was pummeled during the event by students — a group that included football players, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“He’s kicked, he’s punched and he’s got his head on the gym floor and there are 2- and 300-pound people piling on in a series of poundings,” one of his attorneys, Ralph Wegis, told the Associated Press. “It was just an out-of-control (scene), hyped-up kids.”
“He was put in the most hated, personified figure at that time: the opposing team’s mascot,” another attorney, Nicholas Rowley, told the Los Angeles Times. “They dressed him up and had him play the fool.”
Carter’s testimony came years later, after a lawsuit was filed. On Wednesday, the Kern High School District agreed to pay $10.5 million to the now-24-year-old Carter, Rowley said in an email to The Post.
“I would trade everything just to have [a] full-functioning brain, but I think this is a good step in the right direction,” Carter said.
UPDATE: KHSD settles chicken suit beating case for $10.5 million https://t.co/fpyvGU8aPV via @bakersfieldcali
— The Bakersfield Californian (@Bakersfieldcali) June 29, 2016
Here’s the Los Angeles Times, with more details of the what happened at the rally:
Midway through the skit but before the public beating, Carter had tried to stop his performance. After two students hit and knocked him over, he told a school administrator that he would not continue wearing the chicken costume, Rowley said.The administrator scolded Carter, telling him he’d have to pay the $75 cost to rent the chicken costume if he did not continue the skit, the attorney said.
Wegis told the AP that his client spent months at a brain injury treatment center, and had also suffered pituitary gland damage in the incident.
“It changed his whole personality,” Rowley told the L.A. Times. “The boy that left that morning to go to school never came back home.”
The settlement came after a jury found the district liable for the injuries that Carter sustained.
“The Kern High School District has never disputed that this incident should never have happened. The jury assigned the district with 100 percent liability and we humbly accept that responsibility,” the district said in a statement to the AP.
