By ROXANA HEGEMAN Associated Press

The mother of a 14-year-old boy says a cellphone video depicting her son struggling to stand on two broken legs is proof that her son was harmed while attending a Salina military school and supports claims in a federal lawsuit that the school encouraged a culture of abuse.

The 3:39-minute video clip obtained exclusively by The Associated Press (yet to be released) depicts Jesse Mactagone of Auburn, Calif., at St. John’s Military School wobbling and pleading for help as an instructor tries to make him stand. Both of the boy’s legs were broken during the four days in August 2011 that he

attended the school, and he was hospitalized before being flown home. He no longer attends the school.

Mactagone and the families of six other students filed a federal lawsuit in March seeking unspecified damages, claiming the school allowed and encouraged abuse. St. John’s has settled nine previous abuse lawsuits filed since 2006. However, law enforcement authorities in Kansas have declined to file assault charges against anyone at the school, citing a lack of evidence.

“How many more kids need to be hurt before they are heard?” his mother, Jennifer Mactagone, said in a phone interview from California. “Can you imagine

what some of these boys go through, how scared they are? This is the worst case of bullying I have seen and it is all orchestrated by the adults at the school.”

The school, which charges families nearly $30,000 per year for students enrolled in grades 6-12, draws students from across the nation to its military-styled program. In a statement from its public relations firm, the school said it had not seen the video and cannot comment on it. But it said in an email that other parents have expressed outrage at the abuse allegations and told the school how pleased they were at their own sons’ complete turnarounds during their time at the school.

“St. John’s Military School prides itself on its 120-year history of helping young men develop leadership and academic skills in a safe and structured environment and emphatically denies the existence of a culture of abuse,” the school said.

The school on Thursday filed a motion seeking a protective order prohibiting distribution of videos and photos related to the lawsuit. There has been no resolution to that motion.

Jesse’s injuries are among some of the most egregious alleged in the latest litigation. The boy apparently broke the tibia bone in his left leg on the first day he was at the school. His right leg was broken on the third day, with a hospital x-ray showing his femur bone displaced several inches below the knee, according to the lawsuit.

Just exactly how both of Jesse’s legs were broken remains somewhat of a blur, according to his mother. He was pushed while running on the first day, and his mother said that the drill instructor ordered other students to run over him as they passed him. She said the boy also vaguely remembers being beaten before and after the mess hall incident depicted in the video.

In the mess hall video, captured on a cellphone by someone inside, the boy pleads with an adult instructor to “please help me” as laughter from classmates drowns out his cries. The adult instructor repeatedly orders Jesse to stand up on his left leg, then his right leg as he struggles with his crutches. His legs tremble furiously, unable to support the weight of his body. At one point, the instructor asks the boy, “You’ve had a broken leg before?”

Jesse screams in pain as the instructor tells him to pick up his leg up.

“I can’t do,” the boy repeatedly says.

The video then shows cadets taking the crutches away and dragging Jesse under his arms to the far corner of the mess hall. Then, it cuts out.

The lawsuit claims that he was then taken outside and thrown on the ground, where staff and students dragged him by his ankles, shaking them wildly and kicking him in the knees. They demanded he stand up on his broken legs and threatened to punch him in his mouth if he did not stop screaming. Surveillance video from the school shows cadets later wheeling him back to his room in a shopping cart.

Staff and cadets at the school gave police a different account. One cadet told police that everyone assumed Jesse was “faking his injury,” according to police reports obtained by AP through an open records request.

It isn’t clear if the instructors or the cadets knew the extent of his injuries during the videotaped incident. A police report says Jesse went to the nurse’s office multiple times, and was treated with the medical supplies on hand. An emergency room nurse later told police he arrived with an extremely swollen knee and the school should have reacted more quickly.

The instructor depicted in the video told police that he had sent a cadet to get the nurse while he stayed with Jesse in the mess hall. He acknowledged asking the boy to get himself up while he steadied the crutches, but said he told cadets to get Jesse back to the barracks after he was done with his meal. He said he did not stay to see how he was removed from the mess hall. He told police he noticed later that some cadets were carrying the boy by holding him under his legs and he told them not to do that.

Jesse’s mother says her son has been withdrawn since returning home to California. A steel plate remains inside his leg and a centipede-like scar extends from the bottom of his knee all the way to his thigh where his leg was cut open to fix his femur.

“His leg is a constant reminder of what happened to him and that is why psychologically he has buried this so deep,” his mother said. “It is very hard to get anything out of him—he curls up into a ball and starts crying because I think it was just so horrific what he went through.”

The video has not been released to the public yet.

A Marine who recently returned from Afghanistan had his vehicle burglarized Wednesday night, sometime between 10pm and 10am Thursday.

Police say  someone entered a 2010 Toyota owned by Dustin Couse of Hill City, while the car was parked near the intersection of Montrose and Morrison in Salina.

The thieves stole a wallet with $150 cash and credit cards and id’s, a Ruger .22 caliber target pistol. Also taken from the car were military uniforms, two flight suits, an older military gas mask, 400-rounds of .22 caliber rifle ammo, and a iPod.

Loss placed at $951.

Sedgwick County prosecutors say three teens who faked a robbery at a Subway restaurant in Wichita were playing a dangerous game called “Urban Skittles.”

A statement from the district attorney’s office says the game originated in England. It is played by one or more youths who run into a random business and order everyone to the floor. The youths then count the number of people on the floor before leaving.

The Wichita Eagle reports that’s what happened Monday when a young man walked into the restaurant, put his hand in his pocket and ordered everyone down. Police say two teens with him ran out while he counted the people, then he fled without taking any money.

There was no word on whether the youths will be charged.

State officials have prohibited skiing, swimming and wading in four lakes because of concerns about high levels of toxic blue-green algae.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued the warning Thursday for Memorial/Veterans Lake in Great Bend, Winfield City Lake, Marion Reservoir and Marion County Lake.

The state is also advising people to avoid contact with the Old Herington City Lake in Dickinson County, where lower levels of blue-green algae were detected.

Skin contact can cause allergic reactions. Ingesting the infected water can cause diarrhea, vomiting and even death. Animals can die from drinking too much water affected by the blooms.

The toxic bloom sickened more than a dozen people in Kansas last year and killed at least five dogs.

University of Kansas Hospital officials say a baby girl born two weeks ago is a pioneer in Kansas.

They say the baby, Morgan Belle Dickson, is the first child born in the state using a frozen egg.

Her parents are Jessica and Ryan Dickson of Kansas City.

Dr. Samuel Kim heads the hospital’s Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Clinic. He froze Dickson’s eggs in February 2011 while the couple decided how to start a family after having trouble conceiving a child.

The Kansas City Star reports that two fertilized eggs were implanted in August. Dickson found out she was pregnant in November.

Kim says the process has been available for decades but before now was used in the U.S. mostly on the East and West coasts.

A 21-year-old Salina man accused of robbing a former business while wearing a wolf mask and holding a meat cleaver has been sentenced to more than three years behind bars.

The Salina Journal reports Joel K. Chenault was sentenced Monday in Saline County District Court to 40 months. He also was sentenced to six months for breaking another inmate’s jaw, to run concurrent with the other sentence.

He pleaded no contest in March to one count of robbery and two counts of aggravated assault.

Prosecutors say in addition to the meat cleaver, Chenault was holding a 2-by-2-inch board when he went into the Grind on Jan. 4, 2011, to rob it.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is preparing to sign a proclamation apologizing to African-American citizens for the years of segregation sanctioned by state laws.

Brownback scheduled the signing for Thursday, the 58th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.

The 1954 ruling declared separate schools for blacks and whites inherently unequal and struck down the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a justification for segregated educational facilities.

Among those invited to the signing are Deborah Dandridge, chairwoman of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, and Mildred Edwards, the commission’s executive director.

For the first time, racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half the children born in the U.S., capping decades of heady immigration growth that is now slowing.

New 2011 census estimates highlight sweeping changes in the nation’s racial makeup and the prolonged impact of a weak economy.

As a whole, the U.S. minority population continues to rise, following a higher-than-expected Hispanic count in the 2010 census.

But the annual rates of growth for Hispanics and Asians fell sharply last year to about 2 percent, roughly half the rates in 2000 and the lowest in more than a decade. Black growth rates stayed flat at 1 percent.

Pointing to a longer-term decline in immigration, demographers say the peak of the Hispanic population boom may have passed.

A 50-year-old Missouri man with at least 14 prior drunken driving convictions is facing a new DUI charge after a traffic accident and altercation in Johnson County, Kan.

The Kansas City Star reports that John Charles Howard, of Branson, was arrested this week by Overland Park police on a report that he wrecked his car and threatened another man with a knife.

Besides DUI, the Johnson County charges include fleeing from a law enforcement officer and driving with a suspended license.

Court records show Howard formerly lived in the Kansas City area and has DUI convictions in both Kansas and Missouri.

There was no phone listing for Howard in Branson, and he had not been assigned a Johnson County public defender by Wednesday.

The Army is investigating the death of a Fort Riley soldier from upstate New York.

Officials at the northeastern Kansas post say 21-year-old Pvt. Thomas Lavrey was pronounced dead after being found unresponsive in his living quarters on Sunday. The cause of death remained under investigation Wednesday.

Lavrey was a native of West Seneca, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo. He joined the Army in March 2010 and was assigned to Fort Riley in September of that year.

He was a utilities equipment repairman assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Special Troops Battalion, 1st Sustainment Brigade, 1st Infantry Division.