Special needs student's beating captured on video at Detroit school

Principal says he can't apologize enough for what happened at Detroit school

DETROIT – Special needs student Alondra Jones was attacked by another student at the Charles Drew Transition Center, a Detroit Public School for young adults with special needs.

Her mother, Maxine Williams, was devastated to see video of the beating.

"Hurt to see my child down there on the ground getting stomped like that," said Williams.

It was another student who had recorded the attack on his cellphone. It appears he and other classmates knew what was about to happen to Alondra. The video later was posted to Facebook.

"That adds to it," said Williams. "She's humiliated now."

Alondra is terrified of going back to the school.

"I don't want to go to school at all," she said.

Her mother is even more upset because, she says, the school knew about the beating but no one said anything to her until nearly 10 days after the video hit Facebook.

"The school nurse called me and told me she needed to show me something. It was on the (Facebook) page. They think it's a joke, but I don't find anything funny about it," Williams said.

School leaders tell Local 4 there was an earlier reference within the school about the fight video which had surfaced. However, it was not possible to determine any identities of the subjects from the quality of the video that was shown to school officials.

"If I knew what had happened that day, I would have resolved it. Nothing was reported to me," said the school principal, Robert Avedisian.

Williams said Avedisian said he assumed she knew.

"How did you assume I knew this? Then he said it was a fight. Sir, that wasn't a fight. It was an assault," said Williams.

Avedisian gave Local 4 a tour of the school on Wednesday. He takes pride in all of the positive things going on there. He says he hopes people will see his school is much better than what is show on the video. He mostly hopes Williams will give the school another chance.

"You can't apologize enough," he said.

Williams said she just wants her daughter to be happy.

"I just want her to get back to trusting people. I just don't want her to think that this is the way things are going to be the rest of her life," the mother said.