Posted By Eric Owens
A 16-year-old high school girl in Rock Hill, S.C. told police that another high school girl taunted her on a school bus and then beat her up after she got off the bus. The assailant allegedly was angry at the victim because she was behaving “too much like a white person.”
Both the alleged attacker and the victim are black, reports The State, a Columbia, S.C. newspaper.
The incident occurred on Thursday afternoon on a bus carrying students who attend Northwestern High School.
The unidentified assault victim, 16, told investigators she exited the bus on McDow Drive, a winding street dotted with small ranch-style houses. Shortly after she got off the bus, she said, her attacker violently punched her a bunch of times, then fled the scene.
A Rock Hill police report notes that witnesses told the same basic story.
The police report also indicates that the student who got beat up suffered numerous injuries including a serious cut above her right eye.
An ambulance transported the girl to a local hospital for treatment.
One witness, Shelly Hemphill, is the mother of one of the victim’s friends. The victim went to Hemphill’s house after she was allegedly assaulted. Hemphill was responsible for calling the ambulance.
Hemphill told police that the attacker tripped the victim and the punched her again and again while she was on the ground, according to The Island Packet, a Hilton Head newspaper.
In an interview with police, the victim claimed that there has been an ongoing feud between the two girls for over a year. The victim described herself as a “light-skinned black female,” according to The State. She said the other student, who has darker skin, had made fun of her and challenged her to a fight on prior occasions, but she had refused.
The victim said she had again refused to fight her alleged bully on Thursday but then got beat up, anyway.
Hemphill noted that the school bus bully taunted the girl all last year as well.
“It was so bad last year they had to have a police car here when the bus let out,” she said, according to the Packet.
Police have described the altercation as assault, battery and disorderly conduct in a school setting. However, they have not yet been able to find the alleged attacker.
A spokeswoman for the Rock Hill school district told the Packet that district officials had reviewed videotape of the Thursday school bus ride and had seen no fight inside the bus.
The age of the alleged attacker is unknown.
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