Juvenile faces additional charge in bullying attack on New Jersey student Adriana Kuch
BAYVILLE, N.J. -- An additional complaint has been filed against one of the four juveniles accused of bullying and attacking a girl at a New Jersey high school days before she took her own life.
Video shows a group of students brutally attacking 14-year-old Adriana Kuch in a hallway at Central Regional High School in Bayville on Feb. 1.
Her father says they smashed her face with a 20-ounce bottle and that Adriana had bruises on her body and blacked out.
Three juveniles were charged with third-degree felony assault and a fourth was charged with disorderly conduct.
The Ocean County prosecutor's office said Thursday that one of the juveniles is now also charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.
Two days after videos of the attack were posted on social media, Adriana died by suicide.
- If you or someone you know needs help, you can call or text 988 to speak with a trained, caring counselor 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also chat online with a counselor at 988lifeline.org.
"They just kept at it, after they jumped her. They would keep sending her videos. Then they would get screen shots of the videos because the videos kept getting taken down and then they would write nasty comments on it," Adriana's father, Michael Kuch, told CBS2 on Feb. 10.
Gov. Phil Murphy spoke about the case Thursday.
"I was asked, basically, is everything on the table, and the answer is, it has to be on the table," he said. "We do have, I think, the nation's strongest anti-bullying law ... It's pretty clear we need to do more, and we're open-minded to doing more."
Parents and students have criticized the school's handling of the attack, and their handling of bullying in general, at protests and a contentious school board meeting.
The school district superintendent, Dr. Triantafillos Parlapanides, stepped down on Feb. 11.
