The Missouri teen who suffered a critical head injury after being slammed into the pavement during a brawl had been suspended from school the previous day for being involved in another fight, a new report revealed.
The viral March 8 fight where Kaylee Gain, 16, sustained a skull fracture and brain bleed at the hands of a 15-year-old girl was preceded by a fight between Gain and her opponents’ friend, sources told the New York Post.
“It is unclear if Gain was the aggressor or the target in that earlier fight,” the outlet noted.
The publication added that sources said Kaylee and the girl seen slamming her head in the ground were members of “two rival friend groups” at Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis.
The 15-year-old combatant, who remains in custody at a juvenile detention facility on felony assault charges, has no violent history according to her defense attorney, Greg Smith.
Shocking video of the devastating brawl, which took place about a mile from the high school, shows several teens senselessly beating each other as the 15-year-old girl is seen bashing Kaylee’s head into the street — after Kaylee threw the first punch.
Many people online were outraged at the fight video, presumably recorded by another student, arguing that Kaylee’s opponent went way too far when cracking the teen’s skull in retaliation.
Kaylee’s father, Clinton Gain, announced on Friday that his daughter had made progress after spending two weeks in a coma.
“We are happy to share that Kaylee is breathing on her own, remains stable and the best news so far is that we have been moved out of the ICU,” he wrote in an update on GoFundMe. “We are truly blessed by the outpouring of support and your prayers. It means so much to us!”
It appears that Kaylee’s parents, who are not together, have two separate GoFundMe’s set up.
Her mother, April Nordstrom, also provided an update on her own fundraiser:
We are so happy and blessed to announce that Kaylee is now stable, breathing on her own , and was moved out of the ICU. She still has an incredibly long journey ahead of her but she is strong. We will update Kaylees gofundme’s when we can as changes continue to happen. Thank you again to everybody for your support we are so grateful!
Because Kaylee is white and the other girl is black, the fight video also ignited racial tensions.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told conservative commentator Benny Johnson that the girl “absolutely needs to be tried as an adult” and that he is open to bringing forth hate crime charges.
🚨BREAKING: Missouri AG Andrew Bailey says he is open to bringing Hate Crime Charges against the black St. Louis student who was caught on a viral video viciously beating her white classmate, Kaylee Gain, until she was unconscious, leaving her in a coma. pic.twitter.com/KaLT9oDum3
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 26, 2024
Bailey also claimed the school district’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies allowed the fight, which took place off of school grounds and after school hours, to occur.
“I am launching an investigation into Hazelwood School District after a student was senselessly assaulted by another student in broad daylight,” Bailey said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press. “The entire community deserves answers on how Hazelwood’s radical DEI programs resulted in such despicable safety failures that has resulted in a student fighting for her life.”
Hazelwood School District is majority black, with only two percent of the students being white, according to state education department data.
District lawyer Cindy Reeds Ormsby wrote in a Tuesday letter to Bailey that his “obvious racial bias against majority minority school districts is clear.”
“Do you honestly believe, again, without any official verification or specific knowledge, that the fight on March 8th was a result of a racial issue between the female students that was caused by the HSD belief in the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion for all?” Ormsby wrote in the letter, also obtained by the AP.
“What community do you represent as the Missouri Attorney General? Do you represent all citizens of Missouri? Or only the white citizens?”
While a hearing on whether or not to try the teen as an adult is set to take place next week, a petition has been put up on Change.org to get her to be tried as a juvenile instead.
The petition, organized by a woman named Yaya Seven, identified the 15-year-old as Maurnice DeClue, and claimed she was “defending herself from harassment and bullying.”
“She is multilingual, speaking four languages including Spanish and Korean, plays the violin in the school orchestra, played on her school’s volleyball team and was recently selected for college-level AP classes due to her academic excellence,” the page states.
“Prior to an incident on March 8th where she was seen defending herself from harassment and bullying, she had never been in trouble,” Seven continued. “Her work as a scholar was tainted by the bullying she had to endure at school.”
She went on to condemn the “racial divisions” she said were incited by the fight and AG Bailey, and requested that “all aspects of her life be considered during indictment and sentencing.”
Seven also reported that the DeClue family has “received multiple racist death threats and have had people trying to dox them and release protected and personal information about the family and Maurnice.”
All of this is getting in the way of a compassionate, fair, and just outcome. The focus should be to pray for the healing and reconciliation of both parties, as this truly was a teenage fight that should’ve never happened to begin with, but did and spun completely out of control (for reasons that the community at-large should consider and contemplate, as bullying and violence is plaguing many communities across our region and country).
A rival petition organized by Ryan Smith simply states, “This needs to be handled in the adult court system based on the brutality of the assault.”