A teen girl was savagely stomped by over a dozen suspects, and it was all caught on video. As if the brutal attack wasn’t bad enough, though, what one young man was seen doing to the girl while she was “bleeding like crazy” on the sidewalk makes it even worse.
Carlita Gorden was working at a nearby salon when she heard screaming after a group of suspects violently assaulted and robbed a 15-year-old girl in Brooklyn, New York, at 4 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. Gorden ran to the scene on Utica Avenue near Sterling Place in Crown Heights, and she was left disturbed by what she saw.
A girl was on the sidewalk and over a dozen suspects had savagely stomped on her. “For so many kids to jump on one individual, it’s just ridiculous,” Gorden said, according to CBS. The girl was “grabbing on her book bag. No shoes, just sitting … with no shoes. Then, you see the little one holding her sneakers, running away,” Gordan recalled.
The incident was caught on surveillance video, and in it, you see the girl being knocked to the sidewalk by one male before over a dozen others join the attack and begin stomping her. The size of the mob quickly swelled in seconds as more and more suspects converged on the girl, joining in on the brutal beating.
“Come on, it’s sad. We have to do better as a community. We have to do better as people in general. That this little girl could’ve lost her life; it’s really sad,” Gorden said, and after seeing the footage of the suspects in the crowd taking turns stomping on her and kicking her, it’s hard not to agree.
Five suspects, all minors, turned themselves in the following day, according to New York City police. Armed with the footage, the police said they were searching for the remaining suspects involved in the violent gang assault. Investigators believe that the attack was a retaliation for an earlier incident, but they didn’t say what the earlier incident was about.
In a video taken from another position at the intersection, the mob is captured as they begin to disperse after they savagely stomped the girl in the attack. Sadly, in that footage, one suspect is seen pulling the girl’s sneakers right off of her feet while she’s crumpled on the sidewalk and bleeding. As the sneaker thief makes his getaway, he’s caught on camera, appearing to laugh and smile.
The victim was treated at a hospital for bruising and swelling to her face and body from the savage stomping she received. In addition to her shoes, her phone and debit card were also stolen. The attack has rightfully left the community shaken and fearful.
“I didn’t need no trouble,” said Anita Peavy. The incident occurred in front of her electronics store, and she said she quickly brought down the gate and went outside. “I [was] scared the kids [would] come in here and just go crazy the way they was going crazy out there,” she explained. “I have never witnessed nothing like that yet in my life … To see such a small kid just dropping on one kid, it was crazy.”
“She was bleeding like crazy,” Peavy added, explaining that she’s also a registered nurse and that she tried to help the victim after she was savagely stomped by the crowd. “We just tried to keep her calm and sitting there until the ambulance come,” she added.
Longtime community activist Tony Herbert said the victim is his cousin and the attack definitely had lasting effects beyond just physical injury. “She’s traumatized right now. She’s in a bit of pain,” he explained. “[Her] mom is just devastated right now to think that she sent her daughter to go to school to turn around and hear that she was a victim of an assault in the very city that she spent her life in.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams condemned the attack, but sadly, this isn’t a new problem in the community. In fact, before the incident, the NYPD had just recently assigned more than 300 officers to serve as youth coordinators to crack down on crimes where offenders are younger than 18 years old, proving that criminal incidents involving minors, like this one, aren’t anything new.
While teens are notorious for getting into trouble, this takes it to a whole other level. This is attempted murder and a complete disregard for another human life. That’s not okay. Regardless of any prior incident that may have occurred, a mob of over a dozen males convening on a single teen girl, who didn’t stand a chance, and savagely stomping on her repeatedly is overkill, criminal, and, above all, cowardly.