Queens public school staffer broke autistic boy’s arm: lawsuit

Sep 22, 2023

A staff member at a Queens public school for disabled kids broke an autistic boy's arm while trying to snatch an iPad from him and then lied about how the child was injured, according to a new legal filing in Queens Supreme Court.

Administrators at the Robert E. Peary school in Ridgewood — a part of the city's District 75 for students with significant disabilities — say the 13-year-old boy injured himself in a fall while running through a hallway, according to an Education Department incident report reviewed by the Daily News.

But the boy's mother, Joan Aslarona, said her son has consistently given a very different account — claiming a paraprofessional fractured his arm after a conflict over the boy continuing to use his tablet after electronics time ended, according to the court papers.

Aslarona filed a notice of claim with the city in June, which became public as a result of a Sept. 8 legal filing in Queens Supreme Court asking a judge to force the Education Department to reveal the name of the paraprofessional involved.

The Robert E. Peary school on Hancock St. in Ridgewood, Queens. (Google Maps)

"The paraprofessional was attempting to wrest electronic devices away from my son, restrain him, punish him, use corporal punishment," Aslarona said in an affidavit as part of the filing.

The affidavit further claims that doctors at Mt. Sinai examined the boy's injury and "concluded that [he] suffered a badly fractured left humerus, and could not have sustained his injuries in a mere fall."

Doctors reported the injury to law enforcement, medical records show, and the NYPD has confirmed that the police opened an investigation, which is ongoing.

But five months after the incident, Aslarona said she's been met mostly with silence from the school and from authorities — and said the legal maneuver is a final attempt to force some answers.

"This is just something I cannot let go," Aslarona told the Daily News. "How could you hurt my son that way? With that amount of force to break his whole arm? His face when he was crying, that's something I can't forget."

The morning it happened, on April 7, Aslarona's mother got a call from the school nurse saying that her grandson was injured, legal papers detail.

She rushed her grandson to Mount Sinai Queens, where he first shared his account of the injury, according to the court papers.

The boy told family members, doctors and police that he was hurt by a paraprofessional who he only knew by a first name and it happened in a "crisis room" for students in emotional distress, the legal filing states.

Medical records show that the boy reported at the time that "one of the staff" at the school "had hurt him," and that the hospital contacted the authorities.

Aslarona said her son had a conversation with NYPD detectives at the hospital and a follow-up interview shortly after, but hasn't heard from the police since.

An x-ray showing the break in Aslarona's son's arm. (Mount Sinai Medical Center)

School administrators have also met her requests for additional information with silence, she alleges.

"Nobody called to say is he okay?" she said. "My feeling is that they’ve always been protective, sadly, of their staff, instead of my son."

The school's principal couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Education Department spokesman Art Nevins said, "we are not yet in receipt of the Petition in this case. Any allegations of children being harmed are of utmost concern, and we will carefully review this matter as soon as we receive it."

Aslarona said despite the injury, she's wary of switching her son's school — noting that it's extremely difficult to find schools that can accommodate his disability and that she's fearful of causing more disruption the year before he's supposed to start high school.

But it's hard to send him back to school knowing he may run into the paraprofessional he says injured him, Aslarona said.

"For me school was like my kid's safe haven," Aslarona said. "For him to get hurt there, I got very nervous. How could somebody do that?"