Boy in Wheelchair Set Apart in Viral Class Photo Now 'Part of the Gang' in Retake

On Monday, we showed you a second grade class picture that had a Canadian mother upset because her son in a wheelchair was set apart from the main group as he leaned as far as he could toward them. Now, a new retaken photo was release showing 7-year-old Miles Ambridge as "part of the gang," as his mother said he wanted to be.

(Photo via The Province)

Ambridge, who attends school in British Columbia, has muscular dystrophy and needs a wheelchair for mobility. But his parents said the chair doesn't define him and were upset when they saw him stretching in the first class picture to be close to his peers.

“Look at the angle that he was in,” Anne Belanger said to the Province at the time. “He’s ostracized. He wants to be part of the gang so much.”

(Photo: Anne Belanger/Facebook) 

The picture was retaken with Ambridge, not in his wheelchair, sitting a bench with the rest of his classmates, supported by an adult on his side.

Of the new picture, Belanger said "it's gorgeous," according to the Province.

"You can't pick him out this time," she noted. "For him, to fit in, this is what it should be."

The Province reported the first picture getting more than 4.2 million shares on the newspaper's website alone after first running Friday. This is not counting social media and other news outlets worldwide that picked up the story.

The photography company Lifetouch posted this statement on its Facebook page Tuesday:

Lifetouch believes all students should be treated with respect and train our photographers accordingly. We made a mistake at Herbert Spencer elementary and we are sorry, but it was never intentional. We worked directly with the family and school to retake the class photo and the new portrait was delivered yesterday.

“When we saw the new photo come out, the world’s been put back as it should be,” Don Ambridge, Miles' father, told TODAY.com.

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