Calif. Mom Says She Was Brutally Beaten While Going to School Principal About Daughter’s Bullying
California police are investigating an attack outside a high school where a mother alleged she’d been beaten by teens who were bullying her daughter.
Police were called to James Logan High School last Tuesday morning just before 9 a.m. after they received a report of a “fight in progress,” Union City Police Lt. Steve Mendez tells PEOPLE.
“We were told multiple people were involved in the fight,” he says.
Mendez says a juvenile was arrested on a charge of battery with great bodily harm. The juvenile was later released.
According to the New Haven Unified School District, the juvenile was not a student at the high school.
Maria Guadalupe Jimenez told KRON4 that she and her husband Eder Rojas had gone to the high school to tell the principal her 16-year-old daughter was being bullied, when the alleged attack occurred outside the school.
“The girl was very furious; they grabbed by the hair and dragged me,” Jimenez alleged to ABC7. “I just wanted to talk to the principal. You’d never imagine a kid would hit an adult. I thought we were safe on campus.”
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Rojas said he had to pick his wife up from the ground.
“She was bleeding,” he said, KRON4 reports.
Jimenez, who had just given birth to a daughter four months earlier, spent two days in the hospital, according to ABC7.
Mendez says at this point it is not clear who instigated the fight or exactly what happened.
“At this point we have one side telling us one thing and the other side telling us another,” he says. “We don’t know who started it or how it started.”
“It will be interesting to find out exactly why all the parties met up at the front of the school at the same time,” he adds. “We don’t know if they were confronted or went looking for the suspect before going to the principal’s office. We don’t know who did what and for what reason.”
“The motive is part of the investigation,” he says. “There were at least six people involved in this thing. I am not saying they are active participants, but they were there,” he claims.
Mendez says there is no video of the incident and there is a chance that others might be charged.
School Superintendent John Thompson, in a message to parents, said the district would be reviewing their security and safety protocols.
“The safety of our students, staff, and parents are our highest priority and we are continually looking for ways to improve,” he said. “We sincerely hope that the injured parent heals quickly.”
