Anyone who’s been to high school can likely tell you a thing or two about pranks. After all, they’re a fairly common part of growing up, particularly in environments where hundreds, if not thousands of young people are thrown together.
Yet though I was witness to my fair share of practical jokes during my school years, I don’t ever remember watching a prank play out that threatened someone’s life.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think there’s a definite, sacrosanct line that shouldn’t be crossed when it comes to pranks that put people in real danger. Like, for example, exposing them to something they’re highly allergic to.
That’s exactly what happened at Lake Travis High School, Texas, last year, when Carter Mannon’s football teammates decided to sprinkle peanuts in his locker.
Carter’s serious peanut allergy was reportedly diagnosed when he was just nine months old.
“We had him sitting on the counter, and my husband was making a peanut butter sandwich right next to him. Carter reached his hand inside of the peanut butter jar and he ended up smearing it on himself,” his mom, Shawna Mannon, told PEOPLE in February 2024.
“He broke out in hives right away – it was a perfect handprint of hives. And that’s when we realized, ‘Oh, he must be allergic.’”
Through exercising caution, the young man has been able to live a normal life, and he was delighted to have made it onto the Lake Travis High School Varsity football team.
According to Shawna, though, his new teammates – who were well aware of his peanut allergy – filled his locker with peanuts.
Carter had already experienced a prior incident at the school when he accidentally ate a contaminated cookie. On that occasion he was forced to take two doses of his EpiPen and travel to the ER.
Speaking on the severity of her son’s allergy, Shawna revealed: “His levels are off the chart. You have this big strong kid [and] one little peanut could take him down, could kill him.”
An EpiPen delivers emergency doses of epinephrine in cases of severe allergic reactions, per the Mayo Clinic.
“Anaphylaxis needs to be treated right away with an injection of epinephrine,” they write. “If it isn’t treated right away, it can be deadly.”
Carter accidentally eating a contaminated cookie was a worrying reminder of his vulnerability. What his teammates allegedly did, however, is something else entirely.
Shawna explained: “They were kind of joking around about it and they said, ‘But could it kill you if it touched you?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, it absolutely could.’ If it got in his nose, eyes, or mouth, that’s where it would go into anaphylactic shock. And so he told them, ‘Yes, it could absolutely kill me.’
“Then, the next day before the game, they went in and they had put peanuts in his locker, on his jersey, and in his cleats.
“It was a can of peanuts that they just kind of scattered throughout his locker and put in his cleats.”
Carter experienced an immediate reaction, developing hives on his arm. Incredibly, the boys involved in pulling the prank faced no discipline outside of being benched for two days, being forced to switch locker rooms, and doing extra runs at practise.
Instead, Shawna claims Carter faced backlash.
“There was a lot of verbal retaliation…,” she said. “There was one point where someone in the locker room put a peanut butter granola bar in his backpack.”
The concerned mom went to the school board to report the peanut incident. She was then told that it did not qualify as bullying.
A Lake Travis Independent School District representative explained to PEOPLE: “Under the Texas Education Code, bullying is a very specific behavior, and is defined as an act or pattern of acts that physically harms a student or materially and substantially disrupts the educational process. Upon concluding our investigation, it was determined that the legal elements of bullying were not met.”
Carter eventually moved schools.
What would you do if your child was subjected to something like this? Let us know in the comments.
