Two 12-year-olds were arrested for allegedly attacking another student and a teacher at Sunnymead Middle School in Moreno Valley, sheriff's officials said Saturday, less than a month after the death of a 13-year-old boy from a sucker-punch attack at another middle school in the same district.
The fight that led to the arrests occurred Wednesday, and officials with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said investigators were looking for a third suspect.
One girl was injured in the fight, but did not require hospitalization, authorities said.
A cell-phone video of the classroom brawl was posted on social media and shows a girl approaching another girl who is seated at a table. A woman, who appears to be a teacher, tries to intervene by holding the girls apart, but the situation spirals out of control when one of the girls climbs onto a table to get past the teacher and begins swinging at the other girl.
This latest incident comes as the community is still reeling from a Sept. 16 attack at Landmark Middle School that left a student dead.
A video of that altercation shows Diego Stolz being hit by a boy and then being sucker-punched by another boy before banging his head on a concrete pillar as he falls to the ground. Witnesses said Stolz began foaming at the mouth. The assault left him hospitalized in critical condition for over a week. He was pronounced dead on Sept. 24.
On Sept. 30, prosecutors filed voluntary manslaughter charges in juvenile court against two 13-year-old boys who were arrested in connection with the assault.
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One of them denied the charges Wednesday and is set to have a pretrial hearing Nov. 1. The second boy is expected to appear in court on Oct. 15. Due to their ages, their names were not released.
Investigators have been looking into reports that Diego had been bullied.
