Bronx Boys Called “Ebola,” Attacked Over Senegalese Heritage

As New York patients struggle to recover from Ebola diagnoses, Bronx kids are using the epidemic as a target to ridicule fellow students.

On Friday afternoon, 11-year-old Amadou Drame and 13-year-old Pape Drame, recent immigrants from Senegal, were bullied and attacked by fellow students at I.S. 318, who called the boys “Ebola.” According to DNAInfo, the brawl began when Amadou’s classmates assaulted him during lunch, prompting his older brother to come to his aid, when the group started to attack them both.

“They call me from the school tell me come, they’re beating your children,” Ousmane Drame, the boys’ father, told NY1. “I rush, go there my children was very hurt, headached, he was crying, laying on the floor, more than 10 children on top of him, beating him.”

While the Drame boys were born in the States, they have been shunned as the virus has spread, landing in New York last week. In the wake of the traumatic incident, Ousmane doesn’t blame the boys’ attackers. “They don’t know nothing. They’re babies,” he said to NY1. Instead, he places fault on the school, which didn’t do enough to protect his sons from their peers.

“We take this matter very seriously,” said DOE spokeswoman Devora Kaye, “DOE School Safety staff are on site today to mediate this incident and ensure the safety and support of these students, school staff and their families.”