Elite private school sued for expelling 10-year-old who sent emails with squirt gun emoji, lyrics to rapper YNW Melly’s ‘Murder on My Mind’

proceedings during his double murder trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 22, 2023 (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, Pool).

proceedings during his double murder trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 22, 2023 (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, Pool).

Parents of a 10-year-old boy are suing an elite California private elementary school for expelling the fifth grader after he sent a classmate emails containing squirt gun emoji and lyrics from the YNW Melly rap song “Murder on My Mind.”

The suit is against Curtis School in Los Angeles, which reportedly costs more than $28,000 per year and was once attended by David and Victoria Beckham’s kids. According to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the boy and his friend had exchanged emails on Sept. 5, with each of them sending sequential lyrics to Melly’s “Murder on My Mind.”

The exchange, which was initiated by the boy’s friend, went as follows:

Wake up in the morning I got
Murder on my mind
A-k 47
Mac 11s glocks and 9s
They be trying to knock me off my grind but I can’t let them do it I got
MURDER ON MY MIND

Twenty days later, on Sept. 25, the boy was sitting in math class when his friend sent him an email from across the room.

The boy responded “I hate you” in one email followed by several squirt gun emoji in subsequent messages, the suit shows.

“You dead yet,” the boy quipped.

Los Angeles Superior Court filing.

Los Angeles Superior Court filing.

After the squirt gun emoji emails, the boys interacted with each other as usual, including during the school’s annual fair at the Santa Monica Pier, the lawsuit said. On Sept. 30, the school’s director of third, fourth, and fifth grades reportedly took the boy out of class to inquire about the “inappropriate” emails. The director told the boy that she expected to take his technology privileges away as a form of punishment, the suit said. But the next day the head of the school, Meera Ratnesar, who also is named in the lawsuit, called the boy’s parents into a meeting and informed them the school was expelling him.

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“The emails between the two friends do not appear to violate any student conduct rule and the squirt gun emoji is available on the Curtis School’s IT system that is used by the students,” attorneys Mark M, Hathaway and Jenna E. Parker of Hathaway Parker Law Firm wrote. “On information and belief, Respondent Ratnesar did not impose any similar discipline on Petitioner’s friend, nor was his friend barred from campus nor expelled. Respondents’ final decision to expel Petitioner and bar him from campus is arbitrary and capricious.”

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