Diamond Gresham is a 5th grader at Normandie Avenue Elementary School in South Los Angeles. She and her mom say all the kids are talking about an incident last week, when a dozen kids in another 5th grade class purposely cut themselves with razor blades.
"People keep on cutting themselves, and now we can't bring scissors or sharpeners or permanent markers," said Gresham.
The children removed screws in their pencil sharpeners, Gresham said, and took out the razor blades. Then as many as a dozen kids cut their own arms.
"LAUSD is in a bad way," said parent Gian Armstrong.
Armstrong lives across the street from the school.
She saw several ambulances arrive last week transporting at least one child to the hospital, but she could have never imagined their injuries were self-induced by a razor blade.
"Some of them could cut themselves, and bleed to death, and not even know what they're doing," said Armstrong.
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A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Unified School District confirmed the incident, and said letters were sent to the parents of the kids involved.
Mental health counselors were also made available.
"It's something that's very scary," said parent Bonita Smith, "and something that really needs to be looked into to find out what was on the children's minds to do something like that."
