MIAMI – A 15-year-old boy’s mother stood by her son on Tuesday morning in Miami after he was accused of attacking a 9-year-old girl on a school bus earlier this month.
The teenage boy, a first-time juvenile offender, appeared before Circuit Judge Marcia B. Caballero at the Miami-Dade County Children’s Courthouse.
Prosecutors filed the battery case after a witness video surfaced showing the violence against the third-grade Coconut Palm K-8 Academy student on Feb. 1.
“This beating was far more serious than a simple student altercation,” State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement earlier this month adding that “the level of violence” merited a criminal battery charge in juvenile court.
As the video went viral, the victim’s mother said she was outraged when she learned that the adults in the school bus failed to intervene and that the school’s police officer had initially issued a civil citation.
The victim’s mother also said her daughter’s attack was a symptom of an ongoing problem with bullying and fights at the school since she has another child at the school who had previously been victimized.
The witness video shows there was another student who also attacked the girl on the school bus. The school district reported that the second student was disciplined according to the code of student conduct.
Caballero appointed a public defender for the teenage boy, who is facing a misdemeanor battery charge and has his next court hearing at 8:30 a.m., on March 23. Caballero warned that if he failed to appear police officers would arrest him.
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