MIAMI BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - A mother is now taking legal action against Miami-Dade County Public Schools for failing to do enough to prevent her daughter being attacked by a fellow student in the cafeteria.
“I’m just grateful that she’s alive,” the victim’s mother told 7News.
Photos provided by the victim’s mother show her 11-year-old daughter’s injuries, including a spot on her head where another girl had yanked out her hair while viciously punching and kicking her in a Sept. 24 incident at Nautilus Middle School.
The girl’s mother said it happened while the 11-year-old was eating lunch in the cafeteria.
“I received a call that no parent wants to hear,” the victim’s mother said.
The student accused of brutally attacking her appeared before a judge via Zoom in court on Thursday. She has been charged with aggravated battery.
“This is a felony in the second degree. You can not be near this individual, you can not contact her via social media,” said Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Yery Merrero.
The victim’s mother was in the courtroom during the hearing and broke down as she left.
“What is it going to take for something stop? Is it going to take a child being killed? This is the image that lives in my daily life ever since. My little girl, whose brain was just developing, is 11 years old and this happened to her,” she said, holding up a still image of cellphone video showing the attack.
The victim’s mother believes the assault happened over unresolved tensions caused by cheer tryouts.
She said her daughter had made the team, while the other girl was cut, leading to a growing resentment aimed at the 11-year-old, including ongoing bullying incidents prior to the attack.
“She made a threat, a threat to beat my daughter the day before,” she said.
She added that the school failed to alert her of the intensifying problems involving her daughter.
“I was never called,” she said.
That’s what led the distraught mother to retaining a lawyer and, ultimately, filing a lawsuit against the district, accusing the school of failing to do enough to protect her daughter and stopping an attack that, she believes, was entirely preventable.
“They failed to act appropriately to prevent this foreseeable attack. This was a fundamental failure of the school’s duties to protect students on campus,” said Gina Raijman, the victim’s attorney.
The victim’s mother also argued for the alleged attacker to be moved to a safer environment, as court records show her mother has been arrested multiple times for battery, with one arrest coming as recently as last week.
“This is a child who needs major intervention,” the victim’s mother said of her daughter’s alleged attacker. “We need to stop. Violence can not be tolerated.”
Officials for the district have maintained that the school handled the situation appropriately according to the student code of conduct before handing the case off to law enforcement.
The suspect is due back in court in December.
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