Authorities have charged a 15-year-old boy with criminal battery for allegedly beating a nine-year-old girl on a school bus in Miami-Dade County, Florida, according to NBC 6 South Florida, an incident that was caught on cellphone video and went viral.
One boy beats the nine-year-old before a second boy joins him in the video, filmed on a Coconut Palm K-8 Academy school bus on Feb. 1 before it spread on social media, the outlet reported. The first boy is being charged in juvenile court, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Tuesday, noting that a school police officer had issued a civil citation in the case. (RELATED: Man Charged With Kidnapping And Assault Released On $2 Bail, Promptly Commits Another Alleged Kidnapping And Assault)
The girl’s mother said the incident escalated out of a verbal argument, according to NBC 6.
“We believe that, based on the evidence and circumstances, the use of a civil citation was incompatible with the violence displayed by the 15-year-old against his much younger and smaller victim,” Rundle said. A citation had been levied against the second boy as well, NBC 6 reported.
“I’m just hoping that he received the rehabilitation that he needs,” the girl’s mother said of the first boy, according to the outlet. “The amount of aggression he did toward my daughter, I thought was unnecessary.”
Rundle’s office referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to their previous statement.
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