Mickey Hampton, 16, and his family feel unsafe in their home after three teens attacked Hampton. When he was taken to the hospital, his family learned a four-and-a-half-inch knife was stuck in his forehead and lodged in his brain.
An Ohio teen and his family are feeling lost and scared as he recovers from a nearly fatal stab wound after a group of bullies attacked him near his home.
Mikey Hampton, 16, was outside his home near other family members when a group of teens attacked him. His mother, Kiara Easley, tells Inside Edition Digital that this wasn’t the first encounter her son has had with this group, and explained that they have been bullying him for years.
The mother says because Hampton was being bullied so much, she pulled him out of school and enrolled him in a digital program so he could continue his education from home out of fear that he would end up getting fought.
“I had to pull him out of school three years ago when he was 13 because it's a group of boys that pick at all types of people, like kids, I don't know if they call themselves a gang or what,” Easley says. “It's just a group of bad kids that their parents basically don't care what they do.”
Hampton, still recovering from a blade being lodged into his brain, is confused and lost over why this happened to him. Due to the injury, the teen that had dreams of playing in the NFL will never be able to play football again.
“He understood that it wasn't 100% that he would go to an NFL, but just not to be able to play football no more is not sitting right with him. He's hurt about it, actually. He'll watch his videos from his highlights and he'll talk about how he missed being out on the field,” Easley tells Inside Edition Digital.
Something that confuses the family most is why Hampton was ever targeted by the group of bullies.
“Talking to those kids, they can never tell us why they targeted him and why they don't like him,” says Easley. “Whenever we ask them what's the issue, what's the beef, they talk around it.”
Easley tells Inside Edition Digital that she also was bullied while growing up in Sandusky. She was bullied so badly that she had to fight her way through fifth to ninth grade before she dropped out altogether.
She became pregnant at 16 and to protect herself and her baby from bullies she decided to move to Michigan, where she ended up living for six years, before moving back to Ohio to take care of her sick father.
While in Michigan she was able to get her GED and give birth to her oldest daughter and Mikey.
Due to the bullying Easley endured when she was growing up, she tried to teach her children what bullying was and how to watch their own backs so that they wouldn’t have to endure the same things she did.
“If this person makes you uncomfortable in any way, then you have to watch your back anytime or you worried about this person whenever you leave the house,” says Easley. “And I had to make my kids aware of the different types of bullying, because I was bullied. My sister was bullied. And I had to fight for my sister.”
The family has sought counseling to help even his younger siblings process what is happening after Mikey was thought to not make it through surgery.
“It's just the thought that he almost died, that the doctors was expecting him to not make it. And then if he did make it, they weren't expecting him to be able to talk the same, walk or anything,” Easley tells Inside Edition Digital.
Easley says her other children and Mikey feel unsafe at home, since the attack happened so close and since the group of bullies know where they live.
“It happened right outside of our house on the corner, so he doesn't feel safe being here and he doesn't feel safe leaving, being out in the open because he's afraid. He's worried that something else is going to happen to him,” Easley says. “None of us want to be in this house that we're in anymore. We all worry about him when he even just walks outside, stands on the porch.”
Easley has set up a GoFundMe in hopes to be able to relocate.
To make matters worse, Hampton and his sister have to testify in court against some of the teens that have been charged and they are worried that it will cause another attack, Easley tells Inside Edition Digital.
“There's still more of these kids out there that once they find out, because Mikey came to me, he said ‘once they find out that he had to go to court and testify’, he said things are going to get worse and he doesn't want to be in this house,” says Easley.
Hampton and Easley are hoping they can use what happened as an example and possibly speak to younger kids about bullying and how it can impact someone’s life.
“Me and Mikey just trying to figure out a way to become ... I think it's an activist, where you go to different schools and starting with kindergartners and stuff and talk to them about what happened to Mikey and if they're being bullied or, I don't know, just give them some sort of message that maybe can sink in,” says Easley. “It's just too much violence between kids that is not being taken serious and is going unnoticed.”
Easley also thinks more families need to step in and play a more active role in their kids' lives to help prevent these incidents from happening.
“I did everything in my power that I could do to keep my kids safe and keep my son safe,” says Easley. “Basically, parents just need to pay more attention to their kids and what they're doing, from them being toddlers to them growing up. Just because they get older doesn't mean you stop paying attention to them, because all kids, no matter what age it is, they need their parent, whether it's their mother, their father, or both. They need them in their life.”
