A 13-year-old boy has died in the hospital after he was punched during an altercation with two other boys, officials said.
The assault, which reportedly lead to the death of the victim—identified only as “Diego,”—occurred at Landmark Middle School in Moreno Vally, California, reported KTLA.
According to a Facebook Post from the Moreno Valley Sheriff’s Station, Diego was brought to hospital in critical yet stable condition, but later died as a result of injuries sustained during the attack.
Following the incident, police arrested the other two boys involved in the attack, both of whom were 13 years old.
Video of the incident soon surfaced in which Diego can be seen getting punched by one student, after which another student lands a blow to the right side of Diego’s face causing him to fall into a school door and hit his head on a pillar, reported Fox6.
The student who threw the first punch then runs up and punches Diego in the face again as he lay on the ground. The video triggered community-wide outrage.
The two suspects are in custody and will be prosecuted, authorities said.
“Rigorous medical intervention and treatment efforts at an area hospital were unsuccessful,” sheriff’s officials said. “The Sheriff’s Department joins the community in mourning the loss of this young man.”
Classmates of Diego claim he had been bullied in the past, and also mentioned that violence has been an issue at the school.
Officials say further details regarding the incident won’t be released due to the age of the suspects.
“Violence in the communities served by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department will not be tolerated, especially involving our youth,” said the sheriff’s office.
Anyone with information about the case should call Investigator Joshua Manjarrez at 951-955-2777 or Investigator John Tometich at 951-486-6700.
US Crime Statistics
Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).
The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.
The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.
The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.
While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend.
Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.
