Woman And Son File Suit Over Hazing Incident

A woman and her son have filed a personal injury suit against Calhoun County, West Virginia and West Virginia school boards over an alleged hazing incident that took place in a football locker room.

Previously, the Calhoun school officials found no evidence of four players from the Calhoun County High School football team hazing Mitchell Patterson during a summer practice session in 2008.

On March 12, Sherry Patterson, Mitchell Patterson’s mother, filed suit in Kanawha Circuit Court naming the Calhoun Board of Education, the West Virginia Board of Education, the four players, and the parents of three of the players as defendants.

The complaint identified all of the individuals involved in the suit only by their initials, but the Pattersons had previously been identified by the Charleston Daily Mail.

The complaint says that Mitchell was at football practice at the high school on August 7, 2008, when the team was instructed by the coaches to go to the locker room unsupervised.

Once the team was in the locker room, the suit says he was “viciously and brutally attacked, hazed, threatened, better, assaulted, choked, restrained against his will, kidnapped, and bound by his feet and hands” by the four players named as defendants.

According to the complaint, the incident caused Mitchell to suffer emotional and physical damage, embarrassment, and humiliation.

The family seeks compensatory and punitive damages for negligence, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and parental liability.