Kalamazoo Central player number 73 caused a catastrophic spinal injury to Lakeshore opponent, fracturing the spine in two places and ending the victim's season. While Mims demands criminal charges due to the weight disparity, Michigan High School Athletic Association handles the case internally without confirmed discipline. Although student number 19 admits the illegal move was a crime, he deflects blame onto racism and insists it shouldn't define him, despite teammates acknowledging the act occurred alone without coaching instruction. The episode concludes by highlighting the stark divide between calls for justice regarding the severe physical harm and appeals for forgiveness amidst rising threats against school staff. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Disturbing Moment on the Field00:11:51
This video may be disturbing to some.
You can see the moment the player wearing number 73 who plays for Kalamazoo Central jumps on the Lakeshore player.
The video was taken by Mims recounting her reaction after seeing her son was injured.
First was like, is that my son?
And as soon as it clicked that it was, I couldn't be stopped.
I had to go down there.
I've never felt anything like it.
I've never been as upset.
That is nuts.
Looked like he was already injured.
He couldn't get up.
How do you turn a sport into a crime?
You got to be dumb.
That's almost impossible.
Well.
Or shaken up as I was over something for my son.
Her son.
Anything like it, I've heard that.
Look at that.
He's already hurt.
That was intentional.
That kid knows right from wrong.
Should lock his ass up.
Never been as upset or shaken up.
I guarantee he's well over 300 pounds.
Easily.
Easily, yeah.
As I was over something for my son.
Her son was brought to the hospital where they found he has a broken spine in two places.
He was released.
That is crazy.
That's a crime right there.
I could see it's in the course of play and you're following the rules.
You're not doing anything out of the ordinary, but that he's well outside of the bounds of football.
He's from the hospital and is now recovering at home.
He's out at least for this season.
We don't know if he's going to be able to play again.
He should and will make a full recovery.
While the varsity teams are scheduled to face off again tonight, Mims wants to raise awareness for potential dangerous plays.
Boys are high school boys.
You know what?
That look like an all-white team, except for the first guy.
They're 15 years old.
The game means a lot to them.
It's their whole life right now.
They're there from before I get up to go to work in the morning till after dinner, putting in the work.
And for somebody to try to take that from somebody doing so much is awful for me to see.
I reached out to the Michigan High School Athletic Association regarding any potential disciplinary.
That kid should go to jail and he should be expelled.
Yeah.
Well, it actually looks like the team he's on.
There's a lot more black players.
Has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, I'm sure that just a coincidence.
Reaction against the student communications director sharing, quote, we are aware of the situation you're describing.
We talked to both schools and they are resolving this issue internally.
Also reaching out to both schools while we are still waiting for comment from Kalamazoo Central.
Make sure school leaders responded.
We can't share any information at this time other than that we are working with the other school about this situation.
Hello, my name is Ruth.
Okay, this is a kid that was on the team.
Right.
Before we listen to this video, I meant my son was playing football and we was in Northern Virginia, a fluid area where I lived at.
Well, I wouldn't say a fluid, I say upper middle class, right?
This school came into town and they were straight hood.
The coaches were sagging.
The players would look, they was behaving credit like they was crazy.
They had parents on that other team was talking trash to the other players' parents and the coaches, he was threatening other coaches.
I was like, man, who the hell is this school?
Is this like some kind of program they let prisoners out early?
They play football or something.
It was crazy.
Well, this is what, Fairfax?
When we lived in Virginia?
Northern Virginia, yeah.
That school was crazy.
Did after the game, man, they was going to jump one of my son's coaches.
I had to get in between.
He said, you don't want this smoke.
You don't want you any bought this life.
I said, man, this is crazy.
And guess what color they were?
Yeah, you gotta say, you guessed it.
I was like, this is nuts.
Yeah, that behavior is so.
Um, he explains what happened.
I am number 19 on the Kalinzu Central JV football team.
I want to talk about the whole.
He's reading from paper.
He's on the team of the player that did the big splash on other players.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's on that team.
False information and everything that's happening right now.
The decision my teammate made and what he did to the Lakeshore player was not all right.
It was an illegal move and it had no place.
I'm not going to try to defend that.
That was a horrible decision.
That was a crime.
I'm here to talk about what I'm making this video for is because of how my team, my coaches, students, and staff at Kalinzu Central are being treated.
And it's all coming from this one decision that was made.
You said racist racism.
Yeah, no, it's not racist.
They're attacking that kid for his behavior.
Yeah, but they probably call him the N-word kill.
They probably did.
And you know what?
He probably deserved it.
Stop calling him racist.
If that kid would have played within the bounds of football and within the rules, none of this would have happened.
They're calling that kid out for his behavior.
And of course, sometimes people are going to get heated and their feelings are going to get involved and they're going to call you names.
It's just human behavior.
Stop calling these people racist.
That dude, that kid, he behaves like an animal.
Yeah.
Oh, well over 300 pounds.
Yeah, he could have killed that kid.
Well, he did want to try to deflect saying, oh, these people are racist and they're attacking our schools right for the stone.
Look what that dude did.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
He's got two fractured bones in his spine.
Yeah.
And not only should that one decision not define myself, my team, my coaches, or the students and staff at KC, but it also should not define the one who made it.
It was.
What?
So behavior does not define a person.
He's a good representation of what y'all's coaches are like and what your school is like.
This is not anomaly.
This is not an anomaly.
That dude is bad news.
He's probably on the team because the only reason why he's probably on that team is because he's a good football player.
I bet you got, you know what?
I'm going to stop.
I'm going to speculate.
I'm just speculating here.
But I'm pretty sure, man, y'all cut corners for that kid.
Yeah, but they all look the other way.
His behavior should define him.
Yeah.
Okay, I understand what you're saying.
It should define the school too because they should know better.
But for this kid to say this doesn't define him, behavior defines everybody.
He's a representation of the school.
Whatever your kids do at your school is going to be a direct reflection on that school.
Yeah.
It's a horrible decision, but that does not define who he is as a person or who we are.
If I take a knife and unallow somebody, that doesn't define me.
If I go out and break the law, that doesn't define who I am, the type of person I am.
Yeah.
You sound woke as hell.
Yeah, he sounds woke.
And it does not accurately represent the culture at KC.
And with that, the move was intentional.
It's obvious by the video.
He intentionally jumped on the other player, but the injury that came with that move was not intentional at all.
No, you know what?
I think that kid was already injured.
Yeah.
He wasn't getting up.
He wasn't moving.
That kid was already injured.
And then he jumped on him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think that injury came from him.
I don't know.
That dude is 200 pounds.
It's 300 pounds.
He was already hurt, but that didn't happen at all.
Who knows when the injury actually happened?
Right.
He had no malicious intent.
He was doing it like as a celebration or to be funny.
And after to be funny.
It was celebrate.
Oh, Pussy, celebrate.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you lay down and let him jump on you at 350 pounds and see how you like it.
He said it was a celebration.
Yeah, he said he didn't mean to hurt him.
What do you think you're doing when you 350 pounds and you do the splash and spot?
Are you that dumb?
Are you that low capacity?
You don't know that can injure someone?
Yeah.
I mean, you probably watch WWE wrestling.
When they do that, they don't actually land on a person.
They land on their knees and their elbows.
Yeah.
That dude, his 300, 400 pounds, whatever he is, actually landed on that kid's spine.
Yeah.
After the play, he came to me on the sideline.
He said he wanted to apologize.
He felt bad for the kid, but the Lakeshore student had already been carted off the field and I believe was on the way to the hospital.
Some things you can apologize for, but yeah, that's not one of them.
Yeah.
You can't apologize for well, huh?
I say you can some things you can't apologize for.
Yeah.
Like, hey, honey, I'm sorry I cheated on you.
I was going through some things and I made a bad decision.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So he has not been able to apologize yet.
He did not intentionally break the kid's back.
That was not what he wanted to come out of that move at all.
Okay, I get it.
He's just dumb.
He didn't know no better.
What was his intent?
To jump on him and then pin him?
Yes.
Is that was that?
Is that what he was looking for?
I mean, what are you talking about?
The reason that there was no immediate action and the reason the player wasn't taken from the game right away is because the coaches didn't even see it.
We were scoring a two-point conversion when it happened.
So everyone was focused in on a scoring.
And this happened way in the backfield.
So the coaches didn't see it.
They didn't know the severity of what he did.
They thought it was just a pancake, a block, and the kid got hurt.
And that was it.
He did not.
He could say the coaches.
So maybe it is the coach's fault.
The coaches thought it was just a pancake block.
A pancake block?
That's unnecessary roughness.
I know that he jumped on him.
Not even the refs saw it.
Even my mom and dad and brother, they didn't even see it.
Everyone was focused on the play.
The next thing that I want to talk about is the racism that's done with this.
Through posts on Twitter, through comments, through phone calls coming to the school where staff is answering and they're saying the N-word through threats that my coaches have received.
And then with the comments made on videos saying the coaches deserve to be fired because of the music they put on the video, they deserve to be fired because they taught this.
They did not.
They did not teach this.
My teammate made this decision by himself.
We have never been taught to jump on other people.
And the song with the pregame video spoke of violence.
It used cuss words.
And that was just to get hype.
That was, you know, that's what most football players do to get hype for a game because it is a violent sport.
That's the truth of the game.
It's a violent sport.
And I'm not defending what my teammate did.
That is not the type of violence I'm talking about.
But what I do mean is that, you know, you're hitting each other.
And I saw a comment saying, like, try that off the field.
That would be assault.
Any move in football would be assault off the field.
The coach.
You're deflecting.
No.
You totally.
Yeah, I'm done looking at this idiot.
He just totally deflected.
Yeah.
Why are you even talking about what happened after the fact?
Hey, I think this kid actually brings up Martin Luther King and what he wanted.
What?
To be answering these things online or responding to them is not by sending hate or racism or things like that back to the people saying this.
But the Bible says in Proverbs 15, 1, a gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath.
And as Jesus taught and Martin Luther King said, cannot fight hate with hate.
You can only fight hate with love.
I truly believe that.
Fighting Hate With Love00:01:12
Forgiveness.
As I wish, what are you trying to say?
That fat guy that jumped on that one kid, are you suggesting we just give him a hug and make him apologize to the other player and just leave it at that?
Oh, you, yeah, is that what you're saying?
Yeah, I mean, that's if we're being all adults about it, yeah, but you just broke this kid's back, yeah, unnecessarily.
No, I want some payback, I want justice, I want some street just, I want some street justice.
That's what I would want.
Yeah, I'm not looking the other way and turn and turn the other cheek after some fat kid just broke my kid's spine.
Are you nuts?
You're not living in the real world, yeah.
But as Christians, you're supposed to forgive and forget, you know.
Now, I can forgive after he's been sentenced and expelled.
I forgive you.
Exactly.
You feel what?
There has to be some repercussions.
That six years you did in prison for that.
I'm sorry that happened, but I forgive you.
Hey, but man, that kid is never going to be the same.
No.
Once you injure your back, you're never the same after that.
And I suggest he doesn't play football anymore because it could be catastrophic.