JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Gang violence inside a Duval County school led to two students getting arrested last week, police said.
According to a police report from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, two students waited outside a classroom and “ambushed” the victim last Tuesday.
Officers said cell phone video showed the suspects using deadly force. The report said they were, “stomping and kicking [the victim’s] head and body as he was trapped by the brick wall and concrete floor.”
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The report said the fight was in retaliation for an “ongoing gang dispute” and left the victim with a concussion and broken nose. Now the suspects, a Mandarin High School student and Ed White High School student, both 16 years old, are facing aggravated battery charges.
“I have personal concerns as well as for the entire district. I’m not going to say this is new. We know gang activity is a problem in this city — it’s a problem in schools,” Melody Bolduc, a mother and school board member representing District 7, said. “It’s bad enough that it’s happening, it’s worse that it’s happening in our schools.”
Bulduc said children in gangs are often looking for a sense of belonging, and she argued the district needs to evaluate how to provide that dynamic in a healthy way to help students get out of gangs and prevent others from falling victim.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen because violence to me knows no one,” Lillian Jackson, a Mandarin grandmother, said.
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The incident also raised security concerns from some parents who questioned how an Ed White student even managed to get onto the Mandarin campus.
A Duval County Public Schools representative said that based on the district’s investigation, they believe the other student gained access to the campus using another student’s school ID.
“We work collaboratively with JSO on the issue of gangs in the community. Gang-related or not, violence on our campuses is not tolerated,” a representative said in an email to Action News Jax’s Robert Grant.
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“What are the holes in our security? It’s an ongoing investigation to determine exactly how these things happened,” Bolduc added. “I have every faith that the superintendent will have an answer for this and get it under control.”
In a message home to parents, the Mandarin High School principal said, “While this incident did not involve the use of weapons, it was still appalling, and behavior of this nature should never be tolerated at our school or any school in the district.”
According to the message, the level of violence would come with a recommendation of expulsion beyond the criminal charges.
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