[Vision2020] Mother, Teen Arrested After School Fight

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of the Anchorage Daily News at:

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/crime/story/708476.html
 
-------------------------------------------

Mother, teen arrested after school fight
Girls' parents join tussle on Bartlett High grounds

By MEGAN HOLLAND
 
A mother and her teenage daughter were charged with assault at Bartlett 
High School after a long-standing feud involving girls boiled over on 
campus and ended with one mother having her hair grabbed by an assistant 
principal and another mother punching out a teen, according to police.

Monique Willis-May, 41, and her daughter were charged with misdemeanor 
assault Friday afternoon after the fracas involving the kids and adults 
broke out in the gym of the east-side school. 

Officials with the Anchorage School District would not talk about what 
happened. 

According to police reports, though, Willis-May walked into a math class 
and confronted a 17-year-old for allegedly harassing her daughter. The 
woman and the teen got into it again after school. Then the teen's mother 
showed up and the punching started. 

The other mother, Susan Tillmon, who wasn't charged, filed for and was 
granted protective orders over the weekend against Willis-May, her 
daughter, and two of her sons, according to court records. Tillmon's 
lawyer, John Pharr, said she is considering a lawsuit against the School 
District, contending officials did not protect her daughter.

Tillmon's daughter suffered a bruised face in the scuffle, including 
swelling below her eye the size of a golf ball. 

According to the mothers involved in the fight -- both of whom blame the 
other and the other's daughter for instigating it -- Bartlett High 
security measures failed.

Willis-May, in a phone interview Monday, said the tussle between the girls 
started in October. Her version is that several girls were bullying her 
daughter, over what, though, she didn't know. She spoke to authorities at 
Bartlett, which has about 1,700 students, but they didn't do anything to 
separate the one-time friends, she said.

Tillmon's version, also related in a phone interview, is that whatever 
issue the girls had between them it didn't get physical until Willis-May 
showed up on Friday at the high school. Tillmon says her daughter, on 
Friday, went to teachers and administrators multiple times trying to get 
help after Willis-May threatened her. 

She wants to know why Willis-May wasn't immediately escorted out of the 
building and told not to come back.

The district's head of high school education, Mike Henry, said the school 
is still trying to figure what happened. He said, though, he can't recall 
the last time a parent assaulted a student in an Anchorage high school.

Willis-May said she showed up at the school on Friday because there had 
been more bullying at a basketball game the night before. "I was just at 
my wit's end with it," she said.

Tillmon showed up at the school because her daughter phoned her for help, 
she said. "She was scared for her life. She says, 'Mom, they are going to 
kill me. You don't understand what I'm going through. They're harassing 
me. I can't take this, Mom.' "

In front of about 30 people in the gym, the brawl started. 

Willis-May said: "The lady cursed me from A to Z. Very disrespectful. She 
was walking back and forth in the gym, taunting my daughter, calling her 
names, telling her she was scary."

According to Tillmon, it went more like this: She arrived at the gym to 
escort her daughter to the principal's office when Willis-May stepped in 
front of her. "She starts in my face, rolling her neck. 'I'm going to kick 
your a--.' "

Willis-May's daughter took the first swing, according to the police 
report. She struck Tillmon's daughter.

The sequence isn't clear but somehow, according to the police: Tillmon 
jumped into the fray and onto the back of Willis-May's daughter to get her 
off her own daughter and the three began sliding all over the floor; 
Willis-May threw one female student who tried to break up the fight 
against a vending machine and socked her in the mouth, leaving her with a 
split lip; and assistant principal Mike Doody tried to break it up by 
dragging Tillmon out of the ruckus by her hair.

Tillmon was uninjured except for a small cut, she said.

Willis-May was uninjured except for a broken nail on her right pinkie, 
according to the police report.

Police cited and released Willis-May and her daughter at the high school. 

"Parents need to work through the School District to resolve problems with 
their kids," said police Lt. Dave Parker. "To get mom and dad or moms 
involved, then it just escalates. ... The fairest thing they can do for 
their kids is to teach them how to work through the problems."

-------------------------------------------

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapsed Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


---------------------------------------------
This message was sent by First Step Internet.
           http://www.fsr.com/