A video went viral after a white Christian teen was attacked by seven people outside of a church festival in Norwood, Ohio. After the group stopped the 13-year-old boy and sent him to the hospital, the short list of charges has some people furious.
Jordan Sanders, 13, actually tried to keep the incident a secret, making sure not to tell his grandmother, Mary Baker, but then, the video started spreading on Facebook. Once Mary caught wind of it, she immediately took the boy to be examined by a doctor, who told the concerned grandmother to keep an eye on him for signs of a concussion since he had a big knot on the back of his head.
All caught on video outside the Holy Trinity Church festival, the teen was approached by a group of black kids as he was leaving the event. However, the “conversation” they were looking to have didn’t involve words. After figuring out who would hit Jordan first, someone sucker-punched him from behind before six more people started swinging as well. “I went down the hill and then they all just started circling me and I didn’t know what was going on,” Jordan said.
Jordan Sanders was eventually knocked to the ground, which prompted the group to start kicking their victim. Mary Baker said her grandson did not fight back because he feared that he would be kicked off the Norwood Junior High football team, which has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to fighting. “I do not want to fight back because of my football team because I would get kicked off, and I didn’t want to fight back because I had no reason to fight back,” Jordan said.
The group eventually scattered like cowards and ran away. The police used the video to identify six of the seven attackers and said that they would likely be charging each of them with misdemeanor assault, but there was no mention of hate crime charges.
Kim Watkins’s son shot the video, which is difficult for her to watch. The same group of kids was hanging out near her home earlier in the day. “I came out and tried to shoo them away. They cursed at me, they called me names they threatened to shoot my house up,” said Watkins, who told her son to film any bad behavior he saw with his cell phone.
Watkins posted the attack online hoping to get the attention of the police and the local community. She said the same group of kids threatened her son, who witnessed the attack and brought the video home to show his mother. “I was very sick to my stomach. It made me very sick. It upset me,” she said. “It made me angry. I’m sick of the violence that’s going around in this neighborhood.”
Mary Baker has been left wondering how a parent could be so negligent that something like this could happen. “What if it happened to them? How would they feel? They need to get some discipline. Apparently, someone’s not paying attention,” she declared.
Baker wants justice for her grandson. She says that will only happen once the responsible parties are arrested and charged with assault. “You guys don’t know what that video’s like to watch when it’s your own kid. And, I don’t know how a parent can watch it — even the kids that did that. How could they watch that video and accept that?” she asked.
“What I like to see happen is these kids, I don’t want to say get made an example out of because we will charge them appropriately, but I want other kids in the city of Norwood our neighborhood to see that this won’t be tolerated,” said Norwood Police Lt. Ronald Murphy. “You won’t be an Internet star, you might be a juvenile detention center star, but you won’t be an Internet star. You see these videos on social media, and it’s getting very disturbing to me that nothing seems to be done, but we’re going to do something.”
While that sounds nice on the surface, I’m not so sure that a misdemeanor assault charge sends the intended message to the cowards who attacked Jordan Sanders as he was leaving a church festival. But, rest assured, the police are doing “something.” That somehow doesn’t ease my concerns about justice being served.
