A Benjamin Franklin High School student leaped to his death from a four-story building after a classmate punched him and chased him through an outdoor hallway, video shows, with the campus locked down and no charges announced.
New video captures the assault at the Highland Park school on Wednesday before the fatal fall. A fellow student in a black backpack verbally and physically attacked the victim as an elderly teacher tried to pull them apart.
The sequence ended with the beaten student running along an outdoor hallway several stories up, then going over a school railing to the ground below. He was later shown lying motionless. The fall was reported to the Los Angeles Police Department around 1 p.m.
The case leaves a dead teenager, a locked-down campus, and an aggressor who has faced no formal charges so far. Names and ages of the students have not been released.
New York Post reporting on the video describes a series of punches that knocked the victim to the ground. He got back up and ran. The classmate followed.
During the pursuit the attacker said, “Run, n, a, run.” The victim then leaped over the railing of the four-story building. Student witnesses on the video repeated “Oh my God!” as the camera panned to the ground.
A witness who spoke to FOX 11 described hearing the noise and looking up.
The witness said:
“I hear stuff rumbling, falling, and I look up and I see kids fighting. I see a kid getting hurt pretty bad... [he] throws himself over the fourth floor,”
The elderly teacher’s effort to separate the two students did not stop the assault or the chase that followed.
Principal Marine Davtyan emailed parents Wednesday about the response at Benjamin Franklin High School.
Davtyan wrote:
“The safety and wellbeing of our students and staff continues to be our top priority. A medical emergency has required our school to go into a ‘lockdown.’”
All campus gates remained closed until law enforcement authorized reopening. The Los Angeles Police Department received the report of the fatal fall around 1 p.m. that day.
LAPD has not released the students’ names or ages. No formal charges against the aggressor have been announced.
The verified record is straightforward and grim. A classmate launched punches, knocked another student down, pursued him after he rose, and taunted him as he fled along an elevated outdoor hallway. The chased student went over the railing. He did not get up.
School officials called it a medical emergency and locked the gates. Police took the report. The aggressor’s name stays unreleased and no charges have been filed in the public accounting so far.
Parents received assurances that safety remains the top priority after a student already lay dead below the railing.
When a teenager can be beaten and chased on school grounds until he goes over a four-story drop, the adults in charge have already lost control of the most basic duty they owe every student who enters the building.
