Prairie student with broken jaw gets suspended

Peyten Sexton was suspended for three days for his role in the April 28 fight at Prairie Point Middle School that left him with a broken jaw, his mother Tonja Sexton said.

“All the witnesses said that Peyten agreed to go into the bathroom to fight that kid and that Peyten was throwing punches too,” Tonja Sexton said.

College Community School District spokesman Steve Doser will confirm only that two students were disciplined for their role in the widely-publicized incident that sent Sexton, 13, to St. Luke's Hospital for the night last week.

Tonja Sexton said her son disputes the other students' account of things, in which Sexton agreed to the fight and simply lost.

“He swears up and down that he didn't, and I'm going to stick with what my son tells me,” Tonja Sexton said. “The kids had a week to get their stories straight.”

Sexton's lower jaw was broken and cheekbone fractured. His jaw was wired shut last week and he expected it to be that way for four weeks. He said at first he walked innocently into the bathroom at lunch time, was cornered, had some punches thrown at him, and never fought back. The other student has never been identified.

The Cedar Rapids Police Department hasn't been able to shed any light on what happened. Sgt. Cristy Hamblin said in an e-mail this afternoon that the case has been reassigned and police are trying to arrange interviews with witnesses. “There is more to the story than initially told,” she wrote.

Here's what Doser could say, for what it's worth:

“There were two students who were disciplined for their role in all of this. That's about all I can confirm at this point.”