A Texas teen has transferred schools after fellow football players stuffed his locker and football gear with peanuts, knowing that he has a life-threatening peanut allergy. While the school acknowledged it happened, they refuse to call it bullying. The teen’s mom says she wants more accountability.
Teammates Learn of Lethal Peanut Allergy
Carter Mannon, a 16-year-old from Austin, Texas, was first diagnosed with a peanut allergy as a baby. As he grew, the allergy has only gotten worse, with his mom Shawna describing his condition now as “off-the-charts severe.”
According to Shawna, Carter understands just how dangerous peanut consumption could be for him with lethal consequences. He’s well-versed in reading food ingredient labels and carries an EpiPen in case of allergic reaction.
“As parents we prepare our kids to leave home … but it’s hard,” says Shawna. “We’ve been lucky — up until this point.”
As a sophomore at Lake Travis High School, Carter was one of the youngest players on the Varsity football team. His mom says he loved school and football until a scary incident last October.
The night before a Varsity football game the next day, he shared with his teammates that he was deathly allergic to peanuts.
“The players were kind of giving him a hard time about it, because Carter is a big dude,” Shawna told TODAY. “They were like, ‘A peanut could kill you?’ … Carter said, ‘100 percent,’ and that if peanuts touched his eyes, nose or mouth, he could go into anaphylaxis.”
Varsity Football Player is Targeted by Teammates in Life-Threatening Prank
The next day, hours before kickoff, one of Carter’s teammates began flicking peanuts at him.
“Carter didn’t realize they were peanuts until he looked down at the ground,” says Shawna. “He said, ‘Dude, we just talked about this’ … he went into the locker room to get his stuff. He grabbed his cleats … and jersey … and peanuts fell out of his jersey.”
When he went to his locker to suit up for the game, Carter discovered someone had placed peanuts throughout the locker, stuffing them in his cleats and various parts of his uniform.
Carter immediately broke out into hives. Luckily, he knew what to do and how to act quickly, or things could have turned out much, much worse.
“They put this kid in a situation, beyond his control where he was exposed to something that could have killed him, and it was done deliberately and maliciously,” says Dr. Allen Lieberman, an allergist with a specialty in food allergies at Austin Family Allergy and Asthma. “So that needs to be called out for what it is, attempted murder.”
He continued, “At the very least, this is bullying.”
