Rush to judgement from the usual crowd.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the assaultof a high school student in suburban Boca Raton that was captured on video and has been viewed thousands of times on social media.
Investigators said one student from West Boca Raton High School and another from Olympic Heights High School agreed to meet at 2 p.m. about an unresolved dispute at South County Regional Park, north of Glades Road and west of State Road 7.
The video shows one girl attack another and bring her to the ground. Then, several girls gang up on the girl who is in a fetal position and beat her. A crowd gathers, and many of its members use their cellphones out to record the attack. At some point, another girl walks over and attempts to pull two of the girls off each other. Though they stop for a moment, two of the girls go back at her.
Not much can be heard in the video other than screams and one person telling someone to “pull her hair.”
The Sheriff’s Office has not identified the girl who was assaulted or her attackers.
One of the video’s of the fight has been viewed more than 72,000 times on Twitter. One of the people to share the video was Shaun King, a columnist for the online publication The Intercept. King directed his tweet at Boca Raton police — who are not investigating the incident — and said he “was told this is in your town and that this young Muslim girl had been harassed for months before she was brutally assaulted here.”
King asked why they allow “this culture of Islamophobia to grow.”
The Sheriff’s Office said they spoke with the mother of the girl who was beaten and “at NO time was race or bullying ever discussed, determined or considered to have played a role in the altercation.”