‘You didn’t have time to be afraid’: The Castor Gardens paraprofessional who protected kids during Tuesday’s stabbing speaks out
Rasheima Hainey saw a student with a knife and moved to protect the children in her care. Her union chief called her a hero.
When Rasheima Hainey saw a student in her classroom flash a knife — small, black-handled, serrated — she didn’t allow herself time to think. She mobilized.
“You kick into full-blown motherhood, so you don’t really have time to be afraid,” said Hainey. “I was like, OK, if I get hurt, I can take that, but I can’t go and tell this parent, ‘Oh, I’m sorry your child was with me, but there was nothing I could do.’”
Hainey, who works as a special education assistant at Castor Gardens Middle School in the Northeast, was more than an eyewitness when an 11-year-old student stabbed two staffers at the school on Tuesday. She personally shielded students and alerted officials of the danger at hand, risking her own safety.
Hailed as a hero by Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Arthur Steinberg, Hainey shared her story with The Inquirer on Thursday.
‘He has a knife!’
The boy had been having a good day prior to the stabbing — no major behavioral incidents.
It was around noon when Hainey, a special education assistant who works with all the students in Room 108 — an emotional support classroom for students with disabilities — was standing at the back of the room, discussing one student’s grades.
Suddenly, there was a commotion, with students screaming: “He has a knife!” The 11-year-old had pulled out the knife, apparently to show his classmates.
But when the other students grew alarmed, the student’s demeanor changed. Almost immediately, he stabbed in the arm the paraprofessional assigned to be his one-on-one assistant.
Hainey acted in a flash. By that point, another student, a girl, was standing with her; Hainey shielded her and grabbed the phone to alert the office that help was needed urgently.
“He turned around as he heard me on the phone with the office, and he was coming toward me and the other student,” Hainey said. She grabbed the girl and got out of the room fast.
Not far away, a climate staffer was sitting at her post. Hainey warned the staffer that the student had a knife.
“Once [the student] heard that, he pretty much turned around towards [the climate staffer], and he walked up to her and stabbed her in the stomach,” Hainey said.
The boy, who didn’t scream or say anything, was walking down the hallway, which had three other classrooms.
“He was walking down the hallway, banging on classroom doors, trying to get people to open the doors,” Hainey said. One door cracked open. “My first instinct was, ‘Oh, my God, he could stab them.’ It could be bad — he could get into that room, and there’s no telling how many children were in that room.”
Again, Hainey shouted for help. But monitors who are usually in the hallway were in the cafeteria for lunchtime. A girl, unaware of the danger, was attempting to use the restroom; she walked into the hallway.
“I told her, ‘Sweetheart, back up. I don’t want you to get injured. He has a knife,’” Hainey said. The boy spotted the girl, then began chasing her down the hallway. Another staffer managed to grab the girl and get her to safety.
At that point, Castor Gardens’ two school security officers were nearby, searching for the boy, who had fled to another classroom and was hiding behind a bookcase. Eventually, the officers apprehended the boy and got the knife away from him.
No charges have been filed against the child.
‘I love my job’
The boy had had a relatively good stretch of days leading up to the incident, even earning rewards for positive behavior — juice or candy, a text to his parent letting her know he’d done well.
But not all days were good ones, Hainey said. There were times when the boy bit or cursed out other students. Small things, including boredom, could set him off.
“We did have a few incidents [this year] where he just walked into the lunchroom and started punching two girls in the face, kicking them,” Hainey said. After the boy was removed to an office, he attempted to throw a chair at Hainey and another aide.
“In the midst of this incident, he kicked me in the eye,” Hainey said. The whole staff did their best with the boy, who typically learned in a classroom with nine other students and four adults, including Hainey.
Though her job is difficult at times, Hainey relishes it, enjoys working with the children in her care. She’s 29 and has worked at Castor Gardens as a special education assistant for seven years.
“Outside of the incident, I love my job, the children I work with,” she said. “I love being able to come face to face with different people every day and being able to shine a light on a day, no matter whether it’s making a big impact or a small impact.”
Though the incident weighed on her, Hainey showed up to work Wednesday and Thursday.
Hainey is a mother to three children herself; she lost a 10-month-old baby two years ago.
“That was playing in my head — you know, if I can help another mother save their child or keep their child from being hurt, that’s what I’m going to do,” she said.
Continuing to show up is the right thing to do, Hainey said, but “I’m just overly exhausted. If that happened one time, what’s the chances of it happening again?”
But she’s staying at Castor Gardens, Hainey said — the kids need her. She does worry about what would happen if the boy comes back to class.
“If he comes back, I will have to leave my job, because I’d feel unsafe,” she said. “I’m just playing it by ear as of now.”
Because the student is a minor, district officials have not released his name, or information about what consequences, if any, he might face.