Accusation: Boy in Wheelchair Hit

A 23-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday evening after getting into a scuffle over a soccer ball with a 13-year-old boy in a wheelchair at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children.

Mikka Shardai Cline of Waco faces a charge of injury to a child. She was being held Wednesday in the Dallas County Jail in lieu of $1,500 bail. She could not be reached for comment.

Dallas police said that during the scuffle, Cline struck the boy's presurgical medical halo, which was screwed into his skull.

"The medical halo is plainly visible to any ordinary person," a police report said.

The boy's uncle told police he had bought his nephew a soccer ball, and about 6 p.m. the uncle retrieved it from a bush on the hospital grounds at 2200 Welborn St.

Cline and her sister also were trying to get the ball, police said. The sister told officers she had gotten it from the hospital's playground area.

The sisters were visiting a family member being treated at the hospital, hospital spokeswoman Shelley Ryan said.

"We have a park out in the front of our hospital as well as a youth fitness park," Ryan said. "We encourage them to go outside and be active and participate in sports."

Police say that after the boy's uncle handed him the ball, Cline's sister tried to get it from his lap, but was blocked by the boy's uncle.

Police say Cline then tried to grab the ball, swinging her fist twice toward the boy in the wheelchair. It was not clear, according to the police report, whether Cline was swinging at the boy or trying to knock the ball from his lap.

Her first swing missed, but her second swing struck the boy's halo, causing him pain, police say.

"Cline was reckless due to the fact that she consciously disregarded the risk to a child in a halo in which an ordinary person would not [have] swung her fist near a person with a halo," the police report said.

Dallas officers responded when notified by hospital security about the disturbance.

"The most important thing is ensuring that families and our children that are here are safe, and they are restored back to health as quickly as possible," Ryan said. "Obviously we're doing everything in our power to make sure that that happens for all of the thousands of kids that we treat here."