A Texas high school brawl was captured on a cellphone. Back-to-school means back-to-brawling for some out-of- control Texas teenagers at one high school. On the second week of the new school year, double dramatic slugfests were caught on one student’s cellphone and even were called “just another fight.” Meanwhile, the violent video made local news coverage, got picked up by sister stations in other TV markets, and landed on Yahoo News!, but no arrests were made.
On Monday, the fracas broke out in a hallway between class periods at the Cypress Lakes High School in Katy, a Houston suburb. Several versions of the shockingly violent video captured by one student’s cell phone were posted online over social media, according to KTRK-13 (ABC). Amid two two sets of school girls pulling hair, grabbing clothes, banging heads and bashing each other into the hard industrial grade floor, one male teen dances his way through the pummeling.
A video also posted on YouTube as “Ghetto-ass Cy-Lakes fight” including telling comments from some from Cy-Lakes students. One made fun of the cat fight, another was mad that the local news media was interested in the brouhaha. “Way to go Lakes… we are now on national news for being a trashy f**king school,” was one remark. Another wrote that Cy-Lakes has always been a rough school wrought with a violence and gang problem.
“It was punching, slapping hair pulling, rolling on the ground,” described sophomore Brandon Smith, who recorded the fever-pitch scuffles all from a balcony. “You can just see them fighting on the ground and everybody was giving them space. There’s a big crowd around them. The teachers were trying to push everybody out of the way to get to them.”
The four girls grabbed one another by the shirts and hair, wrestling, shoving, and slamming. The video shows teachers and a campus resource officer broke it up. One student claimed the fights started with name calling on social media. The incident alarmed district administrators since last year, a teen was shot in an after-school off-campus fight that students said started at the school.
Despite the actions displayed on video, the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (ISD) said that the four students were disciplined, but no arrests were made. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD issued a statement about the fight:
“We are extremely disappointed to see this type of behavior. This is not a representation of the pride our students take in themselves and our campus. The altercation was quickly broken up by staff and the students involved were disciplined according to the student code of conduct.”
Interestingly, the district’s Student Code of Conduct says students shall not “fight or scuffle” and calls fighting a code of conduct violation, an eligible offense for suspension or optional removal to a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP). The handbook evokes Title 5 of the Texas Penal Code, Sec. 22.01. It defines assault when someone knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to another person.
A district spokeswoman told news outlets that they could not divulge details about the punishment doled out, citing student privacy issues.
According to KTRK-13, some students and parents were not shaken by the incident. High school senior Kendall Norwood told KHOU-11 “it was just wild” and likened it to “boxing.” The student who captured the dramatic hallway slugfest chalked it up as “just another fight.” Meanwhile, other students said that school fights were not uncommon at Cypress Lakes.
The motive behind the fight is still under investigation. Only a few weeks ago, Breitbart Texas reported on school bus surveillance video that surfaced showing Dallas area teens attacking their 63-year-old school bus driver. This incident is also being investigated. The security camera footage in this case went missing in action for months. A co-worker at the bus company, frustrated that no criminal investigation ever occurred, leaked the video to a local TV news outlet in August.
Follow Merrill Hope on Twitter @OutOfTheBoxMom.
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