The 15-year-old Florida boy who was filmed viciously beating a 9-year-old girl on a school bus has been charged with battery, officials announced Tuesday.
The sickening, widely shared video shows the much larger teen and another boy mercilessly pummeling the third-grader, a student at Coconut Palm K-9 Academy in Homestead, last Wednesday as she helplessly tries to fend them off on a crowded bus.
Nobody intervenes during the almost 30 seconds of the attack that was recorded by a classmate, video shows.
The school’s police officer investigated the incident and decided to issue the 15-year-old boy a civil citation, which Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said was not enough after further review.
“We believe that, based on the evidence and the circumstances, the use of a civil citation was incompatible with the level of violence displayed by the 15-year-old against his much younger and smaller victim,” Fernandez Rundle said Tuesday. “As a result, we have filed criminal battery charges with our juvenile courts.”
The teenager has not been identified due to his age.