It’s always a shame to see the school system failing left and right, but when it causes serious physical harm to a student, it becomes incredibly difficult. Especially when they had notice of it being planned.
Pennbrook Middle School was the location of a horrific beating on April 17th as a 13-year-old transgendered girl (biological male) smashed an unsuspecting 12-year-old girl in the back of her head multiple times while screaming, “I’m gonna murder you” at the top of his lungs. Subsequently, a school board meeting was held the next day about the attack. There, a friend of the victim, only identified as “Emily,” shamed the board for their failure to act.
“You could’ve stopped it. It was five hours from when I told you it was going to happen. I don’t get how you couldn’t have stopped that.”
From her recollection of events, the victim, another girl, and herself were facing “targeting every day at lunch. And they would go to the counselor every day and tell them this is going to happen… We had to watch [the victim] taken out with blood dripping down her face and I will never forget that! Laying in bed last night I just kept repeating it in my head.
While the school board alleges that the attack lasted eight minutes, Emily says it lasted closer to 28, and the school failed to react promptly.
Parents of other students have called on the school board to get off their laurels and to form committees to investigate what happened in this attack. As this is not the first (and likely not the last) disturbing incident from their student population, it’s a reasonable request. As they pointed out, they form one for nearly anything else the school does.
The teen in question faced aggravated assault charges and, hopefully, will be spending some serious time behind bars and facing additional charges. From everything that has been said thus far, it seems as if the school has a lot to answer for.
