3 Girls Arrested In Videotaped
Beating
Video Posted Online Shows Vicious Attack By Trio Of Teenage Girls On
13-Year-Old
January 17, 2007
 (CBS/AP)
A 13-year-old who police say thought she was meeting another
teenager to resolve a love triangle was instead dragged by her hair
and punched and kicked repeatedly in the head — an attack made very
public in a video posted online and broadcast nationwide.
Three girls, two 14-year-olds and a
13-year-old, were arrested Tuesday on charges of juvenile
delinquency with an underlying charge of attempted assault for the
Dec. 18 attack at a school yard in North Babylon, N.Y., said Suffolk
County police Lt. Robert Edwards.
In the video, which was posted on
YouTube and MySpace, two Web sites popular with teenagers, screaming
can be heard as the victim cowers on the ground while she's
attacked. Several others look on without intervening as she attempts
to kick back but is overpowered.
"It was a beef over a mutual
interest in a boy," Edwards said Wednesday. "They agreed to meet,
but I don't think the victim realized it was going to be a fight."
After the incident, a group
including the attackers can be seen running away, then laughing and
boasting about how easily they overcame the girl. The image turns
fuzzy, making it appear as though the person holding the camera is
running with the group.
One of the group appears to
complain that she had dropped her Chinese food during the fight.
The beaten girl is an eighth-grader
at a private school, Edwards said. The three accused girls are all
in ninth grade at North Babylon High School. Their identities were
being withheld by police.
Authorities had yet to interview
the accused girls, who were due to be arraigned in family court on
Jan. 30.
Police were investigating who
recorded the attack, and it was unclear whether the attackers were
involved in posting the video online, Edwards said.
The victim was not hospitalized and
did not tell her parents, Edwards said. Instead, school authorities
learned of the video and notified police Jan. 2. That delay
prevented the filing of harsher charges of assault, because physical
evidence of the girl's injuries — which she described as bumps and
bruises — had disappeared, Edwards said.
The victim's parents were initially
hesitant to press charges, but chose to go ahead when the video
gained public attention and was broadcast on several news shows,
Edwards said.
The video was still posted on the
file-sharing site Photobucket on Wednesday afternoon.
The beating apparently ended
because an unidentified driver intervened, Edwards said.
"This car pulls up behind, and a
good Samaritan cracks the door. And they scatter," he said.
This is not the only case of girls
fighting online, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace. All
you have to do is go to a Web site like YouTube, type in "girl
fight" and you get more than 11,000 hits.
Psychologist James Garbarino,
author of the book "See Jane Hit," has spent more than 30 years
studying child violence.
"It's very clear that girls are
being told, 'Even good girls hit,'" Garbarino told CBS News. "It's
not surprising that some of them are taking that to dangerous
extremes."
|
