UPDATE: Gavin is now 13 years old. We have continued fighting the school system and the sheriff’s department on behalf of Gavin. Our attorney; whom we have paid $12k so far; has been in contact with the school system’s attorneys. They have claimed that they want to settle outside of court. My thoughts are that they don’t want anyone seeing the video footage of what happened to Gavin the morning of 9/7/23. The school system states that their insurance company will provide us a settlement offer; it’s been over two years and we’ve heard nothing. Our statute of limitations statute of limitations expires in September of 2026. We now have to pay the attorney fees of a minimum of $10k to file the lawsuit paperwork against the county. We don’t have that kind of money lying around to pay in one lump sum. I have begun selling tshirts and using all proceeds towards the legal fees. But I don’t see that adding up to the fees we need. If you could please help us as much as possible; we would greatly appreciate it!!! Thank you and God Bless!!

Hi, my name is Melissa Long and I am Gavin’s mom. Gavin is now 11 years old, he has level 3 autism and completely nonverbal; he also has what is believed to be a benign brain tumor.

On the morning of September 7, 2023, Gavin was physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally assaulted by three of his teachers at Trinity Elementary School in North Carolina. The entire incident was recorded on camera from the cameras in the school’s hallway. After watching the 11 minutes of video footage; my husband and I immediately pulled him out of the school. We were told by the school administrators and the director of exceptional children that both the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department and the school system’s Human Resources Department were involved in an investigation to address the staff members who did this to our son. Nothing came of it. The school SRO tried to get one teacher to press charges against Gavin because he scratched her hand while trying to get away from her when she had pinned against the center block wall. The teachers were never charged nor fired from the school.

The school system has changed the incident report four times since the day the incident occurred; they have harassed me repeatedly, have threatened to turn us in to DSS if we didn’t bring him back to school.

Gavin was diagnosed with PTSD from the incident and due to his PTSD he suffered a severe seizure in December 2023, went into cardiac arrest and coded. I had to perform CPR on Gavin to get him back to life. Gavin is unable to receive the medical attention that he needs for his PTSD due to the fact that the school system refuses to release the video footage to any physician or myself so that he can begin counseling. he cannot take any medication for the PTSD due to the fact that the majority of them have side effects of seizure activity.

The school system knows that what happened that September morning is wrong because they offered to send him to a private school with an aide at their expense rather than fire the teachers who assaulted him.

He was rushed to the hospital again in June after he had two tonic seizures back to back. He is scheduled for a five day stay at the epileptic unit for a long term EEG in September.

We are now suing the school system and the sheriff’s department for this incident; however the attorney fees are $6,500.00 for 20 hours of service and $325 for every hour over that.

We are asking for help to raise this money and get justice for Gavin!! And his classmates and the future students in those classrooms.

Thank you!!!!

ALL FUNDS RAISED WILL BE USED FOR ATTORNEY FEES!!