BELLEVILLE, Ill. – Mothers of the 10-year-old girls captured on cell phone video fighting at an Illinois middle school are telling different stories about what happened, each saying their daughters were being bullied by the other.
The video, which received thousands of views on YouTube, showed a fight inside a hallway at Whiteside Middle School in Belleville, Illinois. In the video, one girl pulls the other by the hair, throws her to the ground and punches her in the face. The recording was taken by another student on Friday, but has since been deleted.
Shannon Hoerle is the mother of 5th grade Whiteside Middle School student Ava Hoerle, 10. She claims Staneisha Hall, 10, also a 5th grader at the school, attacked her daughter twice, once caught on the video Friday and another time the day before.
"It makes me sick to my stomach,” Shannon Hoerle said.
Hoerle said Hall and other girls have been bullying her daughter since the beginning of the school. But, this was the first time Hall punched her daughter.
"I can't send my child back to school with clear conscience nothing is going to happen to her."
But, Staneisha Hall and her mother a different story.
"They were calling me retarded, dumb, [and] ugly," said Staneisha Hall.
Staneisha's mother, Licurlie Dotson, said the two were friends before she said Ava started bullying Staneisha. She said her daughter got tired of the name-calling.
"I'm still in disbelief,” said Dotson. “My daughter is not a fighter. She does not attack people."
Dotson said things got worse when Ava's mom Shannon posted the video on social media. Dotson said people commenting on the post used racial slurs to describe her daughter.
"Thug, animal, lock the animal up, the n-word, and the b-word,” she said. “That was uncalled for."
Hoerle stands by her claims that Staneisha was the aggressive one.
"In my opinion, if they would have kept this child out of school on Friday, then she had the whole weekend to calm down Friday would have never happened," Hoerle said.
The school district tells 5 On Your Side it offers several anti-bullying programs focused on prevention and how students should handle these situations. But, the superintendent says kids don't always handle things correctly.
Staneisha Hall was suspended for 10 days for her role in the fight. She could have been expelled, but Dotson said after the superintendent read comments on Facebook, she’ll be allowed to return on Wednesday.
The school district’s superintendent confirmed both fights, but said the district does not discuss students’ personal matters.
