Community members are outraged after a video of a Black girl being beaten on a busy street by a group of white kids surfaced online this week. To make matters worse, no one intervened, and at least one adult was heard egging it on. According to The Mirror, the incident happened Monday (Feb. 6) outside Thomas Knyvett College in Ashford, Surrey — a county in England.
“So what punishment happens to this mum for ENCOURAGING [and] HYPING her kids to FIGHT a girl like this? The person who strolled over to break it up and the [people] who watched… You COWARDS at Thomas Knyvett College. LOCK THEM UP,” someone who shared the footage tweeted. In the clip, no adults attempt to break up the altercation until almost two minutes into the intense brawl. Another viewer called the content “absolutely disgusting” and deemed the fight “a racist attack.”
In the following days, members of the community gathered in front of Thomas Knyvett College to protest the behavior of the white students seen beating the Black girl as the woman yelled for the girls to “kick her head,” “get her head and bang it on the floor” and other barbaric commands. “You touch one, you touch all,” protesters chanted. In another video, a speaker stood before the group and said, “Tangible solutions. Steppers only. [The] chatting’s done.”
A relative of the unidentified minor seen beaten in the footage told The Mirror she wants the faculty members who stood by and watched to be fired. “No one from the school brought her back to us. We had to go to her and get her home. They let her go to a friend’s house, and then from her friend’s house, she used her friend’s phone to call us,” the family member said. They added, “She said, ‘Nobody helped me. They were laughing at me. One of the teachers laughed at me with my braids on the floor.’ She had nine braids pulled from her head from the roots, and when we look, you can see the dots where they came off the scalp. I was thinking, ‘Who’s coming? Who’s going to stop it?’” According to the outlet, as of yesterday (Feb. 8), “Four people have been arrested on suspicion of attempted racially aggravated grievous bodily harm, including a 39-year-old woman, two girls aged 11 and another aged 16. A 43-year-old man was also arrested.”
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