A 15-year-old Florida boy who filmed himself brutally beating a 9-year-old girl on a school bus has been charged with battery, authorities announced Tuesday.
The sickening, widely shared video shows the much older teenager and another boy brutally beating a third-grader at Coconut Palm K-9 Academy in Homestead. is shown, as she helplessly tries to stop them on a crowded bus.
No one intervened during about 30 seconds of the attack, which was recorded by a classmate, the video shows.
A school police officer investigated the incident and decided to issue the 15-year-old boy a civil citation, which Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathryn Fernandez Rundle said after further review was not enough.
“We believe that based on the evidence and the circumstances, the use of a civil citation was disproportionate to the level of violence displayed by the 15-year-old against his much younger and younger victim,” Fernandez Rundle said Tuesday. “As a result, we have filed criminal battery charges in our juvenile courts.”
The youth has not been identified due to his age.
Victim’s mother told Local 10 News Last week he said he planned to press charges.
“My intention is not to blame any of the other children,” the mother said Thursday. “My goal is to make sure they have child protection in place to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The heartbroken mother said school officials, overwhelmed by the violence in and around the school, advised her to enroll her three children in another school.
Her two older children were also bullied during their short time at the school, but counselors and administrators did nothing to address her complaints.
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