Teen’s Skull Was Fractured at School. He Can’t Remember What Happened

Over two weeks after an incident at school left 15-year-old August Borden fighting for his life, his parents are still searching for answers.

“We want to know what happened,” says mom Kristen Van Devender, a 47-year-old photographer. “No one’s come to us and admitted anything.”

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary when Kristen dropped off her freshman son for an early morning football practice at Deshler High School around 6:30 a.m on August 19.

Before leaving to pick up her son from practice at 4:00 p.m., she updated her profile picture on Facebook to her son’s new team picture. That’s when a football mom texted, asking if she was already on her way to pick up August.

It was about 3:45 p.m., but Kristen only lived 10 minutes away from school, so she said she wasn’t on the road just yet. “The other mom texted, ‘You need to come get him,’ ” Kirsten says.

Kristen raced to the school and found a cop waiting for her as well as firetrucks and an ambulance, where her son was inside screaming. “It was chaos,” Kristen says. “A living nightmare.”

Although Kristen says nobody from the school called her to let her know what happened, her husband Drew, August’s stepfather, was called to the scene to help calm her down.

Drew, who was at the house when he was contacted, says he was told that August “had a fall” and to “just get here now.”

Pushing for more details, he recalls being told “that there was some rough housing and a fellow student picked him up in a bear hug and he dropped him.”

Although the school district has previously said they can’t comment much on what happened, an investigation is ongoing.

There wasn’t room in the helicopter for Kristen and Drew to join August as he was life-flighted to Birmingham, so the couple drove as fast as they could to Children’s of Alabama. August’s father, who did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment, met them there.

At the emergency room, Kristen says that a police officer took her to an empty room and told her that “the social worker and the chaplain will be right with you.”

“My first thought was that he passed away,” she says. “I was in complete, soulless panic of, ‘I’ve lost my child.’ “

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. August was alive, although he sustained several injuries: a serious concussion, orbital fractures underneath each eye, and a fracture in his skull behind his sinus cavity.

Despite what the family claims they were told by the school, they allege doctors said that their son’s injuries were not consistent with “a fall.” The family believes he was struck in some capacity.

His parents spent the next 60 hours by August’s bedside in the ICU. He was unresponsive and intubated with his eyes swollen shut and cuts on the back of his hands.

Two days later, he was released from the hospital.

When his family asked for a police report, they were told there was not one. Tuscumbia Police Chief Tony Logan — who said late last month that they hadn’t had a chance to interview August yet — did not respond to PEOPLE’s multiple requests for comments.

Police have since announced that the case has been handed over to the Franklin County Juvenile Probation Office, which is receiving assistance from the Madison County District Attorney’s Office.

“We were appointed to go in and look at the matter, and that’s presently what we’re doing,” DA Robert Broussard tells PEOPLE. Madison County is about 50 miles from where the incident took place and Broussard notes that the local district attorney recused himself, which is “not uncommon” for smaller circuits when “you have some personal connection to people involved.”

Dismissing speculation on social media, Broussard says they’re only interested in “hard evidence of people who actually saw something or can testify.”

As of Thursday, Sept. 4, their investigation is ongoing.

August’s parents ask him about what happened every day. They say he “just has no recollection” about the incident that sent him to the hospital, although they claim he did remember an incident with another football player earlier that day.

“There’s not a lot we can talk about,” says Robert Bissell, director of federal programs for the Tuscumbia City Schools.

Bissell provided PEOPLE a statement from the district’s superintendent, which claimed that the incident occurred while players were walking from the weight room to the locker room after a workout. Afterwards, school employees immediately called 911 and coaches began CPR.

The superintendent went on to say that while the district does use security cameras, there were none in the location.

“There’s not a whole lot of detail out there yet, and that’s kind of why people are concerned around here. They want answers,” Bissel says. “We’re not ready to give answers. We don’t have all the information yet.”

“You don’t want to do too much before all the facts are in,” he says, noting that no students have been disciplined yet. “You come down hard on somebody and you want to make sure you know what happened.”

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Meanwhile August is home trying to recover at home with his parents, his 3-legged chiweenie Pico and his corgi-mix Lulu. The exhausted teen has headaches and blurred vision sleeps about 75% of the day. He also can’t be left alone.

Three days after their son was injured, his football team played — and his family says “there was no mention of August.”

“There was no kneel down. There was no moment of silence. It was just football as usual,” Drew says.

That evening, Drew posted photos of August in the hospital and said he was extremely concerned and wanted answers. He asked that anyone with any information please DM him and his wife.

The post went viral.

“We feel people will come forward,” Drew says. “We’re getting inundated with love and emails of people supporting us. People from Seattle to Austin to Nashville to Minnesota – people everywhere have said, ‘This could be my kid.’ ”