Gary Mother Sentenced For Role In School Bus Fight
GARY, Ind. (CBS) -- A Gary, Ind., woman has been sentenced to a year in jail for jumping into a fight between her daughter and another girl.
As WBBM Newsradio 780's Nancy Harty reports, in the incident that led to the sentence, Tracey Childs, 40, got on a school bus after a call from her son in which she found out her daughter was fighting.
The daughter, Jasmine Avant, had been suspended from school in 2010 for fighting on the bus.
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Avant said the victim in the fight where her mother intervened, Donisha Bowers, 15, had confronted her the day before the fight.
"I was talking to this boy or whatever, blah, blah, blah," she told Gary City Court Judge Pro Tem Itsia Rivera.
When the judge asked her what the "blah, blah" was, Avant replied, "I don't know what she said, it was a long time ago."
When Avant saw Bowers the next morning she asked the girl if she wanted to fight and they began to struggle. Videos taken by students showed Bowers on top of Avant fighting, Gary police Cpl. Jeff Tatum testified.
Childs said she tried to break up the fight and was trying to get her daughter's hands out of the girl's hair, not punching the girl and pulling her hair as police described.
"My mother wouldn't hit a little girl. That's retarded," Avant said.
Childs said she separated the two, but the fight resumed anyway. She admitted she was "cursing and snapping out."
"Your daughter's lucky she wasn't 18 when this happened. She has some issues she has to deal with," Rivera told Childs.
While Avant once said she thought it was "hilarious" that her mother got on the bus to intervene in a fight, the Lew Wallace High School student left the courtroom in tears after the judge read the sentence.
The Northwest Indiana Post-Tribune contributed to this report, via the Sun-Times Media Wire
