A student accused of a vicious assault at a Pennsylvania middle school had a “hit list,” another student at the school told her local school board Thursday.
On Wednesday, a 13-year-old student at Pennbrook Middle School in North Wales, Pennsylvania, bashed a 12-year-old with a Stanley metal mug, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, which described the 13-year-old as a transgender student. The victim was hospitalized and needed staples to close the gash in her head.
The Daily Mail reported that the accused attacker screamed, “I'm gonna murder you!” at other students.
"I had to watch them clean up the blood ... watch [the victim] get taken out with blood dripping down her face," a student said at the meeting, according to Patch.
"I'll never forget it. We shouldn't have had to sit there,” she said.
According to the Daily Mail, the girl told the board meeting the accused attacker had a “hit list,” and she was next.
Above all, she rebuked the school for not acting.
🚨BREAKING🚨
A male who identifies as transgender brutally assaulted a female student at Pennbrook Middle School in PA.
One girl who said she was "second on [his] hit list" told the school board that she had begged for help HOURS before the attack, but teachers did nothing. pic.twitter.com/sRRZlnuwZU
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) April 20, 2024
She said one girl was targeted “every day at lunch. And they would go to the counselor every day and tell them this is going to happen.”
“You could've stopped it,” she said. “It was five hours from when I told you it was going to happen. I don't get how you couldn't have stopped that.”
She said, she and two other students filled out forms and related that she was told by a teacher: “Don’t worry about it, it's not gonna' happen.”
The girl added that the school tried to minimize the 28-minute attack by claiming the incident only lasted eight minutes.
Parents were irate.
"As a parent, your worst fear comes to life, when you get that call from your kid, crying, in school, 'Mom, help me, I'm scared, there's blood everywhere.' You can't get to them fast enough. And they hang up on you because teachers and staff are yelling at them to hang up their phones," parent Stephanie Pallica said.
Chris Pekula, who said his daughters had warned of the attack, said the district bungled the situation from start to finish. “What happened from the time you and your district got the warning, that this attack was coming, to when the attack happened? Because it happened exactly the way she told you it was going to happen,” he said.
“Why were kids left in the room that this incident took place, while they were cleaning the blood off the floor? My daughter calls me, crying, hysterical, that they were cleaning blood off the floor,” he said.
Upper Gwynedd police described the incident as an "unprovoked, sudden, violent attack." Charges including aggravated assault will be filed, police said, according to WPVI-TV.
