Standing Up To Bullies, Mom Beaten At Arvada HS

ARVADA, CO -- A high school girl caught on video punching a 50-year-old woman at an Arvada High School basketball game Friday was taken into custody and charged with 3rd degree assault, Arvada police spokeswoman Jill McGranahan confirmed.

The video, posted on social media, shows girls pushing each other in the hallway, identified as outside the Arvada gym during Friday's boy's JV basketball game.

"I'm not going to fight you, I'm not going to fight you," one girl says to another who is pushing her. When a woman, age 50, tries to break up the fight, one of the girls swears at her and then starts punching the woman.

"You can see how many [times] she comes after me and beats me in my face & head (knocked my head into steel doors of gym) I’ve got a huge contusion on my head & bruises & a lump on my face!" a woman police confirmed was the victim posted on Facebook.

Reached by Patch, the victim said she didn't want to stand by as the girl was beaten up. She said another student took the video and gave it to her son.

"I didn’t know her from Adam, but I observed her and the girl -- and the girls' mother -- scream at her and then bully her and cut her down," she said.

On Facebook, she posted a comment:

"I was not about to allow some punk... to bully & beat up this girl up so I got right in the middle standing to like A MOTHER I AM! Maybe not her Mother but for all Mothers who have had their kids bullied in one way or another! [She] has been bullied over the last few weeks by all these girls from this clique! It’s so sad to see & makes me sick to watch video!"

The woman said she had only recently moved to Arvada, and was attending the game to see her son play. The victim was carrying a bag, in which she had a puppy, she said, so she tried to run away as she was being struck.

In the video, another woman, identified as the juvenile's mother, attempts to pull the girl backwards and stop the beating, but the girl breaks away and continues to chase the victim.

"I tried getting away and she kept coming after me aggressively!" The victim described.

"When the other girl started punching me, nobody helped, everyone just stood around. I think it just happened so fast," she told Patch. The woman said she sought medical help at a hospital after the attack because she already had experience with migraine headaches and was under a neurologist's care.

She later told Patch, "I got off the phone with the principal and I think she's got her hands full with girls fighting at Arvada High."

"This case is still under investigation and being handled by the school resource officer," McGranahan said.

The juvenile was released to her mother Friday night and will appear in court at an unspecified date, McGranahan said.

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