The mother of a Southern High School wrestler is speaking out three months after she says her son suffered a traumatic brain injury after being forced to wrestle 25 of his teammates and even an assistant coach in a “circle of death” drill.
The mother recalled this week a parent’s worst nightmare – a child being hurt by someone they trusted and then the adult seemingly getting off scot-free.
The injured wrestler’s mother, Jessica Eplee, told the newspaper this week that she has chosen to speak out now because she believes it’s unfair that the former head wrestling coach, Jim Giannotti, was allowed to resign and keep his benefits and pension as a sheriff’s deputy, without suffering any consequences for his actions toward her son on December 3.
Jim Giannotti resigned as the head wrestling coach at Southern High School on December 9. He also resigned from his day job as a corporal with Alamance County sheriff’s office, effective February 26.
The three assistant wrestling coaches at Southern High School also resigned on December 9, Alamance-Burlington school officials confirmed Wednesday morning for The Alamance News.
Two of the three now-former assistant wrestling coaches also are employed in law enforcement, Eplee pointed out Monday in an interview with The Alamance News.
Caleb Harmon, who had been a volunteer assistant wrestling coach at Southern, is employed with the Burlington police department, ABSS officials said Wednesday.
Jeffrey Ellis is employed as a sergeant with the Haw River police department and is currently assigned as the school resource officer at Haw River Elementary School, Haw River police chief Toby Harrison said last week in an interview.
A third former assistant wrestling coach at Southern, Josh Ahlgren, is not employed in law enforcement, according to Eplee.
ABSS officials confirmed for the newspaper this week that Algrehn, Ellis, and Harmon had been volunteer assistant coaches for the wrestling team at Southern. Giannotti had been paid a $2,133 stipend per season; Giannotti was also employed as an assistant football coach at Western High School, for which he received a stipend of $2,553 per season, ABSS officials said.
Alamance County sheriff Terry Johnson recently told the newspaper that he was unaware of Giannotti’s employment as the head wrestling coach at Southern High School, and Giannotti hadn’t obtained permission prior to accepting the position, as required under a departmental policy.
Scot-free?
After hearing of the allegations concerning the “circle of death” exercise and the wrestler’s injuries in early December, the Alamance County sheriff’s office launched an internal investigation into Giannotti’s role in the incident.
The newspaper sought to contact Giannotti through the sheriff’s department in December to ask him about the alleged chain of events during the wrestling practice and was told that, due to the investigation, none of the parties would comment.
Alamance County district attorney Sean Boone said that an investigation into Giannotti’s role had been referred to the State Bureau of Investigation for further review. Boone said in an interview last week that he has turned the case over to the Caswell/Rockingham County district attorney’s office to avoid a conflict of interest because he has previously worked with Giannotti, whom he didn’t identify by name, as well as others involved in the December 3 incident with the wrestling team at Southern
Giannotti was reassigned on February 2 as a detention officer in the jail’s transportation division and resigned last Wednesday with a final salary of $77,197.96, according to Alamance County attorney Rik Stevens.
Harrison, the Haw River police chief, also confirmed for the newspaper last week that an independent investigation into Ellis’ role had been conducted.
Harrison wouldn’t disclose any details of the investigation, including whether Ellis had been cleared of any wrongdoing, citing state laws that he said provide confidentiality for personnel matters.
Jessica Eplee recalled for the newspaper this week the circumstances leading up to the traumatic brain injury her son sustained after being forced to wrestle his 25 teammates – and an assistant coach, whom she identified as Caleb Harmon – on December 3.
The mother’s account mirrors of her son’s being forced to “enter the circle of death” mirrors the circumstances that The Alamance News reported after the incident came to light in early December.
“It was a normal wrestling practice after school, from 4:15 to 6:15 [p.m.],” Eplee told The Alamance News. “I had gone to the grocery store and left my phone in car; when I got out I saw there were a lot of missed calls.” One was from her husband Matt, telling her that Giannotti had called him and told her that their son, Colby, and “another child had bumped heads and he might have a concussion.”
That other child, according to Eplee, was Giannotti’s son, Carson, another member of the varsity wrestling team at Southern. “Giannotti’s son came [to the practice room] and picked up and slammed another kid,” Eplee told the newspaper. “[My son] was standing there and said something, and they began to exchange words; it was just kids mouthing [off]. [My son] said that the only reason [Carson Giannotti] was on the team is because his dad was the coach.”
Retribution
Gianotti’s son went and told his dad what Eplee’s son had said, and it escalated from there, according to the mother’s description.
“In Gianotti’s own words, he went on a tirade. He proceeded to point at several different students and asked if they could beat his son; he said it had come to his attention that somebody was running their mouth and named my son,” Eplee told the newspaper. “He was yelling; he was loud. He said his son had worked hard to earn his spot, and ‘you’re not going to mess with my family.’”
At that point, Eplee said the coach, Giannotti, told her son, “‘You’ve got two choices: you can quit the team or enter the circle of death.’”
Eplee’s son – who she said had finished as the county wrestling champion in his weight division during his eighth-grade year at Southern Middle School – entered the circle of death, while coach Giannotti left the building because he was sick with pneumonia at the time. “My son weighed 168 that night,” she recalled. “He had to start with the heaviest, who weighed around 290 – and go to the lightest.”
He had to wrestle each of his 25 teammates for 30 seconds each, but in between players, there were others who were on her son for 15 to 30 seconds at a time, and the progression continued with no breaks until her son had wrestled each one, included the assistant coach, Caleb Harmon. “I don’t know his weight, but he’s a grown man,” Eplee pointed out.
“The exercise is a very old exercise,” Eplee said of the circle of death. “If used the correct way, it can be effective. It’s used as a tool to learn different maneuvers; it’s never supposed to be used for discipline. You have those people saying, ‘This is normal, wrestlers have been doing this forever.’ Yes, but not how he [Giannotti] used it.”
After hearing from her husband that her son had been injured, Eplee went to pick him up at Southern High School. He was accompanied by a young woman, whom Eplee says “may have been an athletic trainer” and handed her son some papers about concussions. “She [the athletic trainer] said, ‘he might have a concussion, but we’re not really sure,’” Eplee recalled in the interview.
ABSS officials had not responded by press time to an inquiry from The Alamance News about why no one at Southern High School had called 911 for medical assistance that afternoon. None of the wrestling coaches ever came to speak with her, according to Eplee.
“[Her son] said, ‘I’m really tired; I just want to go home; my head hurts,’” Eplee told the newspaper Monday.
‘Stay awake, stay awake’
“The instant I looked at him, I knew something was not right,” Eplee said. Her son was in a daze and unresponsive, though he did recognize her, she recalled in the interview. “It was like the lights were on but nobody’s home,” Eplee said.
During the five-minute drive home from Southern High School, her son nodded off at least three times, prompting Eplee to “pop him on the arm and say, ‘stay awake, stay awake,’” she said. “I called my husband, said something’s not right, and noticed there was blood in his hair.”
Frantic, she called her husband, said something wasn’t right and she was taking their son to the hospital.
At Alamance Regional Medical Center, her son was diagnosed with a concussion. “I didn’t know at that point he had lost consciousness,” Eplee explained. “When asked, I didn’t have all the information to give the doctors because I wasn’t told the truth about what happened.”
Eplee said her son missed school during the first week of December, and had doctor’s orders to be given special accommodations due to light and noise sensitivity, among other complications, attributed to the concussion.
“He was waking up in the middle of the night with headaches,” Eplee explained. “When he returned to school, his time was limited. We tried to integrate him back into school slowly. [His teachers] had to print things off for him [in large print]. We even had to change the lighting in his [bedroom] because the regular light in his room is too bright. He would go lay in his room and not turn his TV on his PlayStation.”
“He’s much better than he was,” the wrestler’s mother said this week. “My concern is the long-term effect of traumatic brain injury [TBI].” Eplee said her son’s doctors released him to go back into wrestling, and he wrestled his first match early last month. “It’s the long-term effects that you just don’t know about,” she pointed out.
Eplee’s son is continuing to be treated by a neurologist after he was also diagnosed in December with nystagmus, a condition that causes involuntary movement because his “eyes and brain aren’t working together,” as she described it. “He couldn’t control [his eyes] going all the way to the left, which was from the brain trauma,” Eplee told the newspaper, adding that her son has also been prescribed medication to help heal and control his headaches.
While the couple’s insurance has covered some of the initial costs to treat their son’s concussion, Eplee said it’s far too soon to determine the total cost for his medical bills.
Eplee said she and her husband have spoken with an attorney but haven’t yet decided whether to file litigation.
Pictures of the wrestler’s injuries that a source shared with The Alamance News showed that he had a gash to his head and a deep bruise on the side of his face.
Rewinding to the night of December 3 in the emergency room at ARMC, Eplee said she kept trying to ask her son, then 14, what had happened. “He wouldn’t say much,” she recalled. “The doctor asked, ‘is this his normal demeanor?’” Not at all, she told the doctor. “The hospital treats concussions without loss of consciousness different than [those] with loss of consciousness.”
Over the ensuing months, Eplee began to put the pieces of the puzzle together, partly with details that the other wrestling moms got from their sons.
“The moms that did know me reached out,” Eplee said. Two moms she asked to help said their children had initially refused to tell what had happened, until their moms insisted “because [my son] was in the hospital,” Eplee recalled.
“My son is determined that he’s going to college and do this, so he would’ve done anything he was told to stay on this team,” she says. “They’re coaches and police officers,” Eplee said, and her son has been raised to do what he’s told by authority figures.
‘That’s when he loses memory’
Eventually, her son was able to remember going up against each of his teammates until he wrestled Carson Giannotti, Eplee said. “That’s when he loses memory.”
“When he finished, they were told to go get water…He doesn’t remember that. He was very tired; his head hurt; and he just wanted to sit down.
“He told me he fell asleep,” Eplee recalled in the interview. He didn’t fall asleep – he lost consciousness. He was found by another teammate [who] couldn’t wake him up. He punched [my son’s] foot and shouted his name.
“That’s when [my son’s] eyes opened, and he started gasping for breath,” Eplee said, referring to the account she was eventually given by one of the other wrestlers. That mental image crushes me.”
“At that point, the child that found him yelled because he knew something was wrong,” Eplee explained. “I think it was Ahlgren came over and looked at his eyes. I was told later on that [my son’s] eyes were bouncing around like a marble – and they still did not call 911. All of the coaches have gone through concussion protocol training, and they should’ve have called 911.”
“I don’t know at what point Giannotti left – he called my husband from his house – but there were other coaches there who could’ve called 911,” Eplee insisted.
Meanwhile, Eplee seems incensed about the indifference of her son’s former coaches.
Faking it?
“During this whole process, Jeff Ellis never checked on our child,” she said Monday. “Giannotti wasn’t even there at the school. He put this in motion. He called from his home phone; he lives across the street from the school.
“I know Ellis went to work the next the day and told people he didn’t check on the child because he knew the child was faking his injury to get out of discipline,” Eplee told the newspaper.
“I’m not okay with Giannotti being allowed to resign [from the sheriff’s department] but keep all of his benefits and pension,” the wrestler’s mother pointed out. “What kind of punishment is that?
“We totally trusted Giannotti,” Eplee added. “He and my husband were friends before wrestling. If your kid isn’t safe with a police officer, who’s a friend and also a coach, who are they safe with? Now the same people I supported blindly are the same ones who caused my kid a traumatic brain injury. My faith in everything is shaken.”
