Gilbert family fights school district over disabled daughter's injuries

Brad Gray sensed something was amiss when his daughter Stephanie didn't eat much for supper hours after coming home from school on Jan. 23, 2006. She usually was ravenous.

The school nurse at Patterson Elementary in Gilbert earlier had told him Stephanie had suffered a pulled muscle in her leg . That night, as Brad Gray lifted his daughter, then 12, out of her wheelchair to help her into bed, he noticed her leg felt hot and swollen.

Born with a developmental disorder known as Rett Syndrome, Stephanie cannot speak and cannot move her hands. Stephanie communicates through facial expressions and noises.

"When it's severe pain, it's just . . . her eyeballs get really big. Like a silent scream," said her mother, Patty Gray. Brad Gray said he took his daughter to the emergency room at Chandler Regional Hospital where an X-ray revealed her left femur was fractured.