Wrestling great Chris Jericho has shared a video of his niece being “incessantly bullied” by fellow students and called out school authorities in Florida for not taking action.
The video that the All Elite Wrestling star shared on Twitter on Sunday has garnered over half a million views. It shows a young girl lying on the ground and struggling as she gets punched and kicked, while a dozen onlookers surround her.
“Hey Hillsborough Schools – My niece has been incessantly bullied at Mulrennan Middle School for months. Despite my families [family’s] pleas, nobody did anything to help… and this was the result a few days ago,” Jericho wrote.
Several social media users condemned the incident and extended support to the wrestler’s family.
“This is horrible,” wrote Canadian television presenter Renee Paquette.
MMA artist Terrance McKinney suggested that they call up the parents of the girl assaulting Jericho’s niece.
“Wish I was closer to offer some support. I hate a bully, and it usually starts at home. Time to call up them parents,” he said.
The Florida governor’s press secretary Christina Pushaw, when asked about government agencies that deal with school bullying, said: “This is terrible! The school district is tagged in this post, and I think this person did the right thing by escalating to them. At the state level, the agency that oversees public education is the Florida department of education.”
School principal Tamara Brooks said on Monday that there is “much more to this story”, according to Newsweek.
However, she refused to elaborate on the matter citing student privacy laws. Ms Brooks added that the administrators “immediately acted” to break up the fight and discipline those involved.
“The administrators at this school and all district schools do not tolerate disrespectful behaviour between students, threatening language, physical altercations, encouragement of conflict through social media or any other behaviours that put the emotional and physical well-being of students at risk,” Ms Brooks said.
“As far as any previous incidents, if administrators are not alerted to negative behaviour between students, they cannot proactively work to resolve conflict. We always encourage our students to report any incidents on- or off-campus to a trusted adult at school or to their parents,” she added.
However, Jericho alleged that messages sent to the school principal complaining about the bullying were left unanswered.
“I have screen shots of messages sent to the principal by my niece’s older sister on 6 May asking for help with ‘some girls who are messing with my sister…I know who they are & need to talk to u about them’,” he wrote.
“Those messages were left unanswered. Wanna see them?” he added, addressing Hillsborough Schools.
