Self-mutilation at any age is a devastating thing to witness or go through. But when you imagine the cutter as part of a group of elementary school children sitting in a classroom and wielding razor blades in front of a substitute teacher, it becomes a whole lot more unnerving.

Yet that's what reportedly happened at Normandie Avenue Elementary School in South L.A. last week. NBC Los Angeles reports that on Thursday, about a dozen 5th-graders took razor blades out of their pencil sharpeners and all at once, began slicing their arms.

A few were cut so badly that they needed to go to the hospital, and one is still there.

This seems like the type of thing that should have been investigated with a great deal of urgency, but instead, it looks suspiciously like there was an effort to keep it under wraps. No one in an official position has commented on what prompted the kids to suddenly tear through their own flesh -- not exactly typical in-school behavior for children -- and CBS Los Angeles reports that parents didn't find out about the incident directly from the school, but rather from other parents.

But one reporter did make the effort to go to the school and ask one of the children whose friend was involved why they did it.

"I don't really know why," replied the child, "but it was something about the bullies."