DUBLIN — A gaggle of masked men allegedly entered the Dublin High School campus on Friday, followed a 14-year-old freshman into the locker room and beat him bloody, causing a broken nose and a concussion, the boy's mother told this news organization on Tuesday.
Students were just getting out of sophistication and the campus was emptying apart from a couple of student-athletes, coaches and administrators. The boy was standing outside the locker room about 3:30 p.m. Friday, picking up his football jersey and preparing for practice, said his mother, Cherie Barfield.
Then he was suddenly confronted by a bunch of masked assailants allegedly led by the mother of a classmate, who called out to discover Barfield's son. The mother was together with her daughter, a freshman at Dublin High, Barfield said.
“When he looked up and looked at them, there were five men coming from both sides wearing ski masks and hoodies,” Barfield said. “The two friends he was with ran away and he immediately jumped up and went to the locker room because he thought he was safe.”
But the masked men followed the 14-year-old into the locker room and started beating him, Barfield said. He was thrown into the locker room, punched around and jumped by first one after which all five men, she said. The girl and her mother reportedly followed the attackers into the locker room and captured the attack on video.
The boy fought back but was eventually overpowered by the group and left bleeding on the bottom, his mother said. The school district's superintendent said a head coach and other students were nearby and stopped the attack. But Barfield claims nobody stepped in to assist her son.
Barfield was unaware of the attack until she heard from one other parent whose child had seen the 14-year-old bleeding within the locker room. Barfield called 9-1-1 and rushed to the varsity to seek out her son.
She says a dispatcher told her that there have been no cops on campus because they’d been called to an incident in one other a part of town, and that no officers were immediately available to ascertain on the 14-year-old.
When she arrived on campus to search for her son, she said, she found him alone on the locker room bench, bleeding and dazed from the attack, with nobody to look after him. She said he had difficulty talking to paramedics after they arrived because his head was pounding from a concussion.
She claimed that nobody from the varsity had contacted her concerning the attack on her son.
“I didn't know if my son was still alive, I didn't know anything at all,” Barfield said. “I didn't know what had happened to him, to what extent.”
In a press release on Tuesday, Dublin Police Chief Nate Schmidt said the suspects had not yet been identified, but all were captured on school video surveillance. The suspects are believed to be between 16 and 19 years old, police said. The age of the parent remains to be unclear, and police haven’t yet made any arrests.
“It is not believed that this was a random incident, and school security continues to interview witnesses and collect video evidence to determine a motive and how the victim, suspect and parents at Dublin High School know each other,” Schmidt wrote within the press release.
The after-school incident outraged the varsity's principal and compelled the district to revise its policies on campus safety and student supervision.
Dublin Unified School District Superintendent Chris Funk said the principal and 4 assistant principals were all on campus on the time of the attack, which police said occurred around 3:30 p.m. According to the varsity's schedule, the last bell on Fridays is at 2:20 p.m. Funk said the varsity's administration is on campus each day until the varsity office closes at 4:30 p.m.
“The people who came to campus had been there before and obviously knew the campus and could go back to the guys' locker room,” Funk said in an interview.
Funk said this incident “requires us to review our policies and procedures and make some adjustments.” He added that the varsity immediately made changes to protocols and now ensures that the varsity's locker rooms remain locked in any respect times, especially after students have finished changing.
He said there was no campus police or student resource officer on campus on the time, as they’re stationed in any respect area schools and move from campus to campus throughout the day. Even if an officer was on duty, he said, they might not typically be stationed outside the locker room at the moment of day, but quite somewhere further forward in the varsity in an area with higher foot traffic.
“I don’t think an SRO could have prevented this,” Funk said.
Funk added that the district is reviewing school supervision hours in addition to locker room security through the school day and after school.
Barfield said her family plans to take legal motion against the varsity and has hired an attorney to handle the fallout from the attack on her son. She said she wants the young girl and mother who allegedly provoked her son and brought the lads to campus to be expelled from the varsity and expelled from the district.
Her son is not going to return to highschool until it’s secure, even when which means missing his first football game as a running back and linebacker for the Gaels, she said.
“There was no one there to do anything about it,” Barfield said. “There are no heroes in this story.”
Originally published:
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