Parents learn fan that injured Complex student improperly installed

ST. CROIX — Fresh from a lengthy and occasionally bruising appearance before the Legislature, Education Department leaders met with dozens of concerned parents and community members in the St. Croix Educational Complex cafeteria on Tuesday, nearly one week after a Complex student was hospitalized by a falling ceiling fan.

Denise Joseph, the mother of the injured student, told the crowd on Tuesday that she received a call at 11 a.m. on Thursday alerting her to the injury. She said she was told that she either had to take her son to the emergency room or an ambulance would be called and that her son “got hit by a fan and the cut is real deep.”

She said she didn’t know how deep until they got to the ER and removed the bandage, and the blood started “dripping and dripping and dripping.” Complex’s Parent Teacher Organization wrote to Education Commissioner Dionne Wells-Hedrington to request the meeting in the aftermath of that incident. The meeting gave parents and others an opportunity to ask how potentially dangerous industrial ceiling fans ended up in a school classroom.