Two young white girls in upstate New York have been charged — one with a hate crime — after allegedly attacking a black female classmate on a school bus and subjecting her to racial taunts, police said.
The students, ages 10 and 11, of the Gouverneur Central School District allegedly beat the 10-year-old girl on Sept. 10, according to investigators. The mother of the child who was attacked told police she was “physically assaulted” and “subjected to racially motivated language on the school bus.”
Authorities said the black child was punched in the eye, had her hair pulled out and suffered a bruise to the knee.
Two female middle school students were identified as the culprits in the attack, the Gouverneur Police Department stated in a news release obtained by Fox News. The girls were each charged with one count of second-degree harassment, and the 11-year-old was additionally charged with a hate crime.
Bus monitor Tiffany Spicer, a white 28-year-old employed to keep students safe while they ride the bus, was also charged following the incident. Police said she witnessed what was going on with the students, “but did not make an effort to stop and/or prevent said behavior.” She was charged with three counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
Lauren French, the superintendent of Gouverneur schools, told WWNY-TV the attack “is probably the most professionally devastating event since I started working at Gouverneur in 1984.”
“How do we become better out of this? How do we treat everyone better?” she said. “I firmly believe we are better than this, and we have to take a stand.”
The students and their parents have been referred to St. Lawrence County Probation “for further action,” police said.
*story by Fox News