A New Jersey school district agreed to pay $4.2 million to settle a suit with a student who was paralyzed after being punched in the abdomen by another student during a bullying incident.  The bully, Sawyer Rosenstein, caused him to suffer a rare injury called an infarct.  This is where a rupture of an artery occurs above the navel.  This caused him to be paralyzed below the waist two days after the assault.

However, this was not the end of his trauma.  This caused him to undergo 19 surgeries over the next five years, including a complete spinal fusion in 2008.  That procedure failed and he had to have the hardware bone at every level of his spine removed and re-fused in 2011.

The student who bullied him had a history of bullying prior to the incident.  The bully had acted out violently towards several students; however, he was never disciplined according to the New Jersey Law Journal.