Latoya Gore, a New York City mother, has filed paperwork in court to get the city’s Department of Education to release video footage that shows a bunch of eighth-graders assaulting her 7-year-old daughter, the New York Daily News reports.
Gore says that when her daughter, Taniya Jules, defied the girls’ orders by not joining a fight club and not fighting another classmate, Taniya was dragged down a school hallway by her hair and pummeled by the students, who are much older than she.
Gore is furious with teachers and administrators at Public School 111—the Queens, N.Y., elementary school where the inident took place—who she says did not supervise the students or reprimand the eighth-graders who beat up her daughter. Three other first-graders were also assaulted by the female fight club.
“I want to know why the children weren’t supervised, and I want the eighth-graders disciplined,” Gore told the New York Daily News. Gore described how Taniya was so traumatized by the incident, she was reluctant to speak about it with her mother.
“She still won’t tell it all because she’s still shook up by the situation,” Gore said.
Gore was initially told by the school nurse that Taniya had hit her head on a table, but when Gore caught wind of the existence of a fight club at the school, she went to the school and asked to see video of the incident.
Gore filed a “notice of claim” to force the Department of Education to release the footage of the assault in its entirety. According to the New York Daily News, it’s a preliminary step before Gore sues the DOE and the city for $5.5 million.
Read more at the New York Daily News.