[UPDATED: The 13-year-old middle school student who was attacked has died. Get the full report here, along with the uncensored Facebook video.]
A boy is hospitalized in critical condition after being violently assaulted by two other students at Landmark Middle School in Moreno Valley on Monday. Law enforcement is investigating whether the injured boy had been the victim of bullying prior to the attack.
All three boys are minors, and have therefore not been identified. The school has referred to the injured boy only as Diego.
The brutal attack was caught on a video posted to Facebook. In the video, one of the alleged bullies appears to be talking with Diego before sucker punching him in the face. It looks like a second person then hits Diego, knocking him headfirst into a concrete pillar. Then the first boy returns and punches Diego while he’s lying on the ground.
The two 13-year-olds involved in the attack have been booked at Riverside Juvenile Hall on suspicion of assault likely to produce great bodily injury. Both of the alleged perpetrators are honors students.
There are now allegations that this was only the latest in a string of bullying incidents involving Diego. It is unclear if the school was aware of any bullying, or if they were aware but did not do anything about it. School officials have referred questions to the Sheriff’s Department.
Landmark Middle School is no stranger to on-campus violence. According to the Los Angeles Times, sheriff’s deputies have been called to the school six times since August 2018 for reports of battery. The largest incident took place on March 19, when deputies actually had to fire pepper balls into a crowd of 50 students who were brawling.
At a school meeting on Wednesday night, hundreds of parents gathered to voice their anger at school administrators. Parents say the school has done nothing to stem the epidemic of bullying that has occurred on the Landmark campus over the past year.
One of the parents, Jorge Quintero, told KTLA-5 that his own daughter has been bullied at Landmark. He said “[the school administrators] don’t do anything about it. So we are very sad and very angry at the same time.”
According to Moreno Valley’s Press-Enterprise, parents asked Principal Scott Walker if he had seen any evidence that Diego had been bullied prior to Monday’s attack. But Walker only said the incident was still under investigation. Parents didn’t like that answer.
“I’m not trying to dance around it,” said Walker. “But I don’t have all the facts in front of me.”
The Stop Bullying Now Foundation says 280,000 students are physically attacked in secondary schools every month. A whopping 77% of secondary students are bullied mentally, verbally and physically.
[UPDATED: The 13-year-old middle school student who was attacked has died. Get the full report here, along with the uncensored Facebook video.]