Is This the Meanest Kid in All of Alabama?

By Timothy Roche/Gulf Shores

In kindergarten, Lance Landers lunged at his teacher with a sharp pencil. In sixth grade, he drew pictures of himself clobbering kids with a baseball bat. By the time he reached middle school in the resort town of Gulf Shores, Ala., he would spit into trays of food in the cafeteria, hurl batteries at other students and disrupt classes by jabbering nonsensical words he claimed were Spanish. Most mornings he greeted the principal with "Hello, motherf__!" Lance taunted bus drivers by saying he paid no price for misbehaving.

Until recently, he was right. A 15-year-old ninth-grader, Lance had been declared "emotionally conflicted," and was shielded from expulsion by federal laws that protect children with disabilities. But last April he went too far. On a school bus full of children, he punched a teacher's aide and threatened to grab the steering wheel and cause a wreck. District Attorney David Whetstone sued the boy in civil court, describing him as a "clear and present danger," and persuaded a state judge to bar him from all Alabama public schools. "It was a little creative," says Whetstone, "but we were out of resources."

The boy's mother, Anne Vinson, appealed the judge's order last week and is now suing the school district, accusing it of violating the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Vinson says her son suffers from extreme attention-deficit disorder and needs treatment, not banishment. "He wants to be like everyone else, but he can't help himself."

Most of the time, Lance doesn't seem very menacing. He mows lawns for spending money and collects Matchbox cars. But when somebody challenges him, says his mother, "he can get very ugly and mean." Where does that come from? Vinson doesn't know. She has a degree in early-childhood development, and she has six other children (three by her first husband, one other by Lance's father, whom she divorced shortly after Lance was born, and two by her current husband), none of whom have been in trouble.

Vinson has taken Lance to psychologists and neurologists, who have tried half a dozen drugs, including Ritalin. Nothing has worked. "His mouth," she says, "goes 10 times faster than his brain." Counselors say Lance's violent tantrums are learned behavior. He knows that acting out wins him attention.

His teachers say they can't help anymore. In elementary school, they told the judge, they referred Lance to a psychiatrist, and he was later sent to an alternative school. But he was sent back because he wouldn't take his medication. His mother home-schooled him for a semester, after which he returned for eighth grade. The school hired aides to sit beside him in class and on the bus, but Lance mocked and assaulted them.

The day after the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., last April, Lance brought a newspaper to school, showed an aide the story and asked, "Did you see this?" He said nothing else, just stared in a way the aide found threatening. More chilling, say school officials, are Lance's drawings of cities that he says he wants to destroy. Hank Vest, the Gulf Shores Middle School principal, says, "He made the statement that I did not know what all he was capable of doing."

Lance's lawyer, James Sears, says the teen is "stuck in the politics of Columbine." District Attorney Whetstone, who knows the boy's family from church, showed no interest in him until after the Colorado school shootings. Now, he says, he hopes to use Lance's case to make a larger point. Whetstone says all the advice on preventing another Littleton "gives us a list of things to watch for, but everything on it describes emotionally conflicted kids" like Lance, and they are shielded from expulsion by federal law. "I may not know what the answer is, but I know what the answer is not. You don't let them stay in school."

When Alabama schools reopen this week, Lance will be at a treatment center and wilderness camp near Birmingham. A juvenile judge sent him there for assaulting the school-bus aide. His mother and lawyer don't think it's the best place for him to get help, but until his court appeal, he has noplace else to go. "He's not some two-headed monster with a tail," says Sears. "He's just a kid with a disability."