About 255 people have donated more than $11,000 to support the family of a boy hospitalized in intensive care with a brain injury. He was struck in the head at Odessa Shannon Middle School in Silver Spring on Wednesday.

Emily Diaz, the boy’s mother, created the GoFundMe campaign to help with medical bills, and raised the sum in less than 24 hours.

“i’m not the type to ask for money or handouts, but i desperately need whatever help i can get,” Diaz wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. She identified her son as Lenny.

The boy was struck in the head “by what was described as a metal object thrown by another student,” wrote principal Natasha Booms in a letter sent to the school community the next day.

In the letter, Booms said EMTs quickly transported the student to a hospital, where he “remains in serious condition.”

Lenny suffered an “open skull injury and the bone fragments went into his brain,” Diaz wrote in the GoFundMe. He is currently in the pediatric intensive care unit on a breathing tube, she said.

The school provided counseling support to students in the affected class Thursday morning, according to Booms.

“Our staff will continue to reinforce expectations for safety and appropriate behavior, and additional supports are available for students or staff who may need to talk about what happened,” she said.

Diaz said it is unclear what recovery will look like for her son.

“my son is a very smart, loving, adventurous young boy and i feel like his life was taken even though he’s still alive,” she wrote.