Three years after their son’s injury, the Kevlins are still looking for answers
Amber Kevlin immediately took her son to urgent care where he received a cast.
Amber Kevlin photo
What do you do when the place that seems to best accommodate your child fails them the worst?
That’s the question Amber Kevlin was grappling with on Sept. 25, 2023, after she was called to pick up her 12-year-old autistic son from the office of Shining Rock Classical Academy School Resource Officer Bryan Reeves.
Kevlin said that when she arrived at Shining Rock that day, then-Head of School Joshua Morgan — who resigned his position March 10 with 90 days of severance — first warned her not to believe her child.
“[Morgan] pulled me to the side when I got there, and [was] like, ‘He’s gonna tell you he’s in the worst pain of his life, but we didn’t do anything to him,’” she said.
But in the car, she noticed him guarding his left wrist, so she drove him to urgent care. A few hours later, the boy had a cast and a diagnosis — an incomplete distal radial torus fracture. Known as a buckle fracture, it typically occurs in children ages 7-12 and is caused by compression and/or force, usually by falling onto outstretched arms.
But this injury wasn’t a result of something as simple and innocent as a fall.
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The series of events that led to the broken wrist started him requesting and being subsequently denied a trip to the bathroom. It ended with what the boy described as a pop, then pain all over — the product of a come-along hold at hands of the Reeves, who manipulated his wrist down and back en route to the SRO office.
Reeves is employed by Waynesville Police Department, which declined any disciplinary action. He is still at SRCA. As a district SRO trainer, Reeves is also assigned to multiple Western North Carolina counties.
Kevlin’s son received multiple charges, requiring a trip to the Department of Juvenile Justice. She said that in the wake of having a broken wrist, he regularly suffers panic attacks and is afraid to leave the house. She’s still struggling with what it means that, after all these years, so many know their story and yet neither SRCA nor WPD will apologize, let alone acknowledge what happened that September morning.
The Evidence
There were four videos from the day of the incident — two filmed ostensibly by Reeves inside the SRO office and one each from the school’s downstairs and upstairs security cameras.
The official Shining Rock footage begins in a second-floor hallway. Two adults — Exceptional Children educator Kacey Darr and math teacher Ashley Price — are shown standing outside a classroom. A few seconds pass. Darr appears to speak to someone inside the classroom. Then, she and Price both point their fingers, motioning down the hall.
The boy exits the classroom and walks in the opposite direction. Price positions her body to physically block his path. He’s a head shorter than the two teachers and attempts multiple times to move past them. The boy is curled up on the ground less than two minutes after the start of the whole ordeal, chest hugging thighs, legs tucked under themselves.
Price points down the hallway and Kevlin’s son whips his head around. Reeves appears in view of the camera. Shortly after, Morgan approaches. At this point, the boy is surrounded by four adults standing over him. He gets up, then tries to run to the bathroom door. Reeves grabs him by the wrist and hooks his other arm around the armpit. The SRO manipulates the child’s wrist above his head, pulling him forward.
The two appear on the downstairs camera about 20 seconds later. The child is still locked in a come-along hold, though Reeves seems to be applying more pressure to his forearm. Morgan and the two teachers trail them before each disappears off screen.
The first of the SRO office videos begins with what looks to be Darr yelling at the child.
“You don’t have to get hands-on treatment,” she says, “but we do, from you.”
“If you yell, Mr. Morgan’s gonna come back through here, and you’re gonna get a third charge,” Reeves says from behind the camera. (Reeves eventually filed four charges, though not until Oct. 30, 2023, after the Kevlins had submitted a grievance against Morgan.)
The child is teary and claims he’s going to pee himself, to which the SRO says, “if you pee in my chair, you and I are going to have problems.” The boy screams at Reeves to stop recording.
“You don’t want to see your behavior and how childish you’re acting?” Reeves responds. The second video mainly involves Kevlin’s son crying out for his mother.
In a meeting the following day — which included the Kevlins and everyone present when the boy’s wrist was broken except Reeves — Price told her version of the story, mentioning the footage caught by the Shining Rock camera. She noticed him complaining his medication wasn’t working earlier that morning. Before the Reeves’ involvement, the boy had just transitioned to social studies, which comes with a five-minute break to relax and use the bathroom. Students are not allowed to go during class “unless it’s an absolute emergency,” Price said, because social studies is already short.
Not even two minutes after that transition, she told the Kevlins, Darr came to get him for an exceptional children activity.
“He ran out of my class and said, ‘I need to go the bathroom right now.’ I said, ‘Look, you need to hold on a second.’ So even in the video, you can see that I’m saying, ‘Hold on a second. You had five minutes. Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you go with Miss Casey right now?’” she recounted.
But he refused. He wanted to use a particular bathroom, which his mother later told The Smoky Mountain News was because it was less crowded.
Price and Darr both contended he didn’t need to use the restroom, and he wouldn’t give a straight answer when directly asked. But Amber Kevlin said when her son responds that way, it doesn’t mean he’s being dishonest. He’s autistic, and his specific communication style must be taken into consideration, she said, adding “one of his very serious fears is using the bathroom on himself and having kids make fun of him.”
“I feel like, instead of it escalating to a resource officer, maybe just let him go to the bathroom,” she said.
The conversation turned to Reeves’ actions. Morgan had been in a meeting, so the SRO had taken it upon himself to step in. Amber’s husband, Ross, questioned why Reeves felt there was reason to grab his child.
“Because he pushed into a teacher,” said Morgan.
Ross turned to Price directly. “And were you in fear?”
“No,” she said, “but I will never allow any student to ever put their hands on me. I have taught long enough I’m not going to allow a student to ever put their hands on me.”
“Okay, so you call the cops anytime you’re touched by a child?” he asked.
Morgan argued Price’s decision was justified because the boy had been displaying “aggressive behavior” and “did commit assault.”
“If [he] had just done what the teachers had asked him to do, would we have been involved at all?” he asked.
Ross pushed back, telling Morgan that one can’t reason with his son like they might a neurotypical child.
“So are we to let him …” Morgan trailed off.
Ross finished his sentence for him. “… go to the bathroom instead of breaking his wrist? Yes.”
Morgan said if the situation were to crop up again, school administration wouldn’t do anything different.
“We will continue to expect him to follow directions,” he said.
The Response
At one point during the Sept. 26 meeting, Ross Kevlin offered a sharp analogy to Morgan.
“If I sent [him] to school and he shows up with visible bruises and a broken wrist, and he says I did it because I was trying to get him to do something that he wouldn’t do, would you call [the Department of Social Services] on that? Or would you say, ‘Oh, well, it’s just [him]. [His father] probably had to do it.’”
The head of school didn’t offer much in the way of a response.
But someone else had called DSS the prior morning. Sharon Breedlove, an educator with 27 years of experience, reported what happened upon witnessing it. She was first drawn in by the noise, she told SMN.
“I don’t even know how to describe it. [He] was seriously screaming like, scared, hurt. It was not just a kid’s scream,” Breedlove recounted. Though she’d never met the boy before, she was concerned.
“I started to walk back down there, because it was just weird how he was screaming like that. So, when I took a few more steps, I saw Reeves, and he had the little boy’s arm up behind his back, and the little boy was bent over, and [Reeves] was pushing him down toward the stairway,” she added.
The former Shining Rock teacher said when she approached the boy, Morgan, Reeves, Price and Darr had him backed into a corner between the two double-doors and the “little opening area” above the stairs. That’s where he claimed the injury occurred five seconds before he and the SRO descended the first flight of steps.
“I went straight back to my classroom, and I called DSS,” said Breedlove.
It was the second anonymous DSS report she’d made in a relatively short period. The first, she said, involved a girl inappropriately touched by her classmate during two separate instances — of which Breedlove had been notified by the girl’s parents — but that classmate, the child of an SRCA employee, wasn’t reprimanded, and the situation allegedly wasn’t investigated. According to Breedlove, DSS followed up on neither that matter nor the injury to the Kevlins’ son.
The only individual that expressed any interest in her reports was Morgan.
“The next morning, when I came to school, Morgan had someone come up to my classroom,” she said.
This was odd, but even more strange was that she’d lost access to her email and the app Shining Rock educators used to communicate with parents. She was called to the head of school’s office. Apparently, Morgan had caught wind of the second anonymous DSS submission. Breedlove said she was told that the administrator checked the cameras to determine which faculty had witnessed the situation.
The former SRCA teacher was quick to defend herself — and the Kevlins’ son. Referring to the boy’s situation, she told Morgan, “‘I’ve never seen adults treat a kid like that in my life.’”
Unsatisfied with Morgan’s answers, Breedlove said she resigned. Reeves and Morgan wouldn’t allow her access to her classroom to collect her belongings, her son’s phone included — and the SRO and another officer had physically blocked the door.
Breedlove said she’d return several days later to find her belongings thrown on the sidewalk. Her son’s phone was missing, along with some other items. Much of what remained was broken.
On the day of her resignation, Breedlove filed a report with the Waynesville Police Department.
“They pretty much blew it off like he was a good officer,” she claimed.
The Kevlins said they had the same experience when they approached WPD on Sept. 27 but couldn’t easily elucidate their concerns.
Qualified immunity provides a shield from civil liability against a public official, as long as a court determines the behavior in question is not in violation of “clearly established” constitutional or legal rights. It often protects law enforcement, including SROs, from lawsuits filed over alleged misconduct.
In a statement provided to SMN April 9 of this year, the Town of Waynesville wrote that “no disciplinary action was taken” against Reeves and confirmed that, at the time of the incident, the SRO was not wearing his body camera.
In a later phone call, Breedlove and Amber Kevlin discussed WPD Chief David Adams’ unwillingness to investigate.
The Kevlins would eventually withdraw their child from Shining Rock, but it took some time to make that decision. He’d been there since kindergarten, and his friends were all there.
Parents of neurodivergent students at charter schools, the Kevlins among them, tend to choose this educational pathway because of their children’s specific needs. Most are drawn to the small class sizes, individualized academics and one-on-one attention. For these children in particular, charters can be quieter, more sensory-friendly, structured options.
“It was a good alternative to the public school. [Charter schools] were smaller,” Kevlin said, adding that she and her husband loved SRCA until their child had his wrist broken. “That last year was just so hard.”
Others, like former Shining Rock parent Brittanie Duncan, had come from — and felt dissatisfied with — the public school system. Duncan said when her son was in third grade, she made the decision to enroll him at SRCA. He has ADHD, she said, which “is definitely a lot to handle if you don’t know how to handle it.”
Like with the Kevlins, Shining Rock was an incredible fit at first. The teachers were active with the children, allowing her son to thrive. But the unique benefits of charter schools can be counteracted by unique problems. For example, charter school boards are self- appointed, not elected like in public schools, and don’t have to answer to their community at the ballot box.
The Kevlins found out the extent of this lack of accountability at Shining Rock upon filing a grievance against Morgan, claiming he ignored their son’s injury, advised them to ignore the injury and didn’t render medical aid or refer the child to the school nurse.
SRCA requires informal dialogue between the aggrieved and the accused before a formal report is filed and sent to the head of school to investigate. Since in this case the head of school was the defendant, the board’s three-person governance committee took over the process. It then submitted the matter to the entire board — an uncommon practice that according to the resolution letter was “due to disruptive and disparaging communications in the local community concerning the grievance, including an article published in a local newspaper and several negative social media postings.”
The board, in a Nov. 8, 2023, letter, shared that members not only unanimously voted that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the complaint but also said it “fully supports and approves Mr. Morgan’s professional manner in responding to the incident, communicating about the incident, and supervising and directing employees during the incident.”
In a statement provided to SMN April 9 of this year, current SRCA Board Chair Alyson Weimar wrote, “This matter was handled by a previous board and decisions were communicated to the family. Due to student privacy considerations, I am unable to provide further comment. The Board and SRCA leadership remain committed to student well-being and have taken, and will continue to take, proactive measures to support a safe and positive environment for all students.”
Charter schools also generally employ teachers with less experience and report increased turnover. Licensure with the NC Department of Instruction is not a requirement for hire, as with the state’s public school system.
As far as Shining Rock goes, quite a few faculty — including the school’s Title I Coordinator — do not have a teaching license. Breedlove partly attributed how the Kevlins’ son was treated to an absence of expertise among the two teachers in working with autistic children.
But she mainly singled out Morgan’s behavior with anecdotes reminiscent of her testimony at the 2025 Fitzgibbon v. Lay trial, which SMN covered at length.
“A grown man that would make fun of disabled children in the middle of a staff meeting, it is absolutely appalling. Not only as a principal but as a human being,” she said last year on the stand.
Though Morgan didn’t limit his behavior to disabled children.
“He played basic, stereotypical bully, and he does it to everybody,” she told SMN.
However, in her son’s first few years at the school, Duncan held an opposite impression of Morgan.
“He used to speak to us. He used to make time to have conversations with my child, praise him,” she said. “It was the type of experience that you want your child to get.”
Then her child hit sixth grade, and she said, “it went from — excuse my expression — sugar to shit.”
In seventh grade, Duncan’s son found a can and decorated the bathroom with its contents — Vienna sausages. Morgan, claiming he had video footage of the child’s wrongdoing, said he had committed “vandalism” and suspended him for two days.
But then on the bus, a white kindergartener allegedly called the boy, who is black, the N-word. Duncan told Morgan about the incident, only to later receive an email from then-Lower School Director Sarah Jenkins — recently appointed interim head of school at Shining Rock — was notifying her the administration wasn’t going to follow up because they couldn’t find proof anything had occurred. That was the end of Duncan’s son’s time at the school, a withdrawal they mainly attribute to Morgan’s conduct.
But for the Kevlins, Reeves’ behavior was the biggest part of the story.
SROs have become nearly ubiquitous in charter and public schools. Their presence is correlated with increased firearm detection and a slight reduction in threats and fights, but it’s not associated with a decrease in gun-related violence. Education Week, citing years of research, noted that SROs are “linked to disproportionate discipline of boys and Black and disabled students.”
Across the country, students with disabilities face suspension, expulsion or arrest at a rate 300% that of their able-bodied peers when police officers are present in educational settings.
The day of the incident, the Kevlins’ son received two charges spelled out on an official law enforcement document — simple assault of two teachers and disruption of a school day. The Department of Juvenile Justice requested the Kevlins appear in person to explain what their son had done.
“I said, ‘number one, he didn’t do anything.’ And [the DJJ employee] kind of rolled her eyes a little bit, and was like, ‘Okay, what did [he] allegedly do?’” Amber said.
She presented the videos and walked the woman through the situation.
“[The DJJ employee] flipped her tune so fast. She was like, wow. She said, ’In 22 years that I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen anything like this,’” she recounted.
Later, Kevlin received a paper in the mail from the department. Her son — who, according to his mother, “cries over hostile architecture, where homeless people can’t lay down” — was clear of all charges.
Though even after his wrist healed, he didn’t come out unscathed on the other side. He’s homeschooled, after several panic attacks during his first few days at Waynesville Middle School. He doesn’t trust law enforcement, sees a therapist twice per week and takes anti-anxiety medication.
“He has a really bad issue with leaving the house now. He hates it. I mean, I took him to the arcade yesterday, [and he kept saying], ‘When can we go home? And it’s been like that ever since [the incident],” Amber said.
Breedlove said that as the boy is still in pain, she still struggles with what she witnessed three years ago.
“It was a traumatizing thing to watch.”
