11-Year-Old Girl Charged in 'Swirly Gone Wrong'

A first-grader is recovering after an older schoolmate apparently smashed her head several times against a school toilet—in what police are calling a "swirly" gone wrong, KFVS-12 reports. Authorities tell Fox 5 Atlanta that 6-year-old Lanira Tackett was dragged into a bathroom stall Thursday at Oakland Elementary School in Henry County, Georgia, by an 11-year-old girl who choked the younger student and stuffed her head in the toilet two or three times. Lanira ended up with bruises, scratches, and cuts, and remains fearful of entering bathrooms by herself, mother Cheryl Tackett tells WXIA Atlanta. The assailant "was choking her, and banging her head viciously on the toilet, and covering her mouth," says Tackett, who calls the attack premeditated.

Tackett says the fifth grader had already approached Lanira on the school bus and threatened to assault her. Then on Thursday, the girl "said she wanted to talk to my daughter," Tackett says. "She pulled her into the bathroom and proceeded with the attack." In fact, Cheryl and her husband Jeremy say the school had already flagged the fifth grader for bullying but nothing was done, WSB-TV reports. Now the alleged assailant has been charged in juvenile court with battery, aggravated assault, and imprisonment, as the sheriff's department and school district continue to investigate. "People choose to ignore it, but they need to know that bullying is real and it is something that affects children," says Jeremy. (Indeed, a 16-year-old girl was apparently murdered in her school's bathroom in Delaware in April.)