A Benjamin Franklin High School student died after a classmate punched him down and chased him until he went over a fourth-floor railing, video now shows the assault that came first.
The attack unfolded Wednesday around 1 p.m. at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park, where a student was beaten by a classmate in an outdoor hallway several stories up, then went over a school railing and was left lying motionless on the ground below.
California Post reported that new video captures the sequence: a fellow student in a black backpack verbally and physically assaulted the victim, launched a series of punches, and knocked him to the ground before the fatal fall from the four-story building.
Los Angeles Police Department officials reported a fatal fall at that hour. They have not released the students’ names or ages, and no formal charges against the aggressor have been announced so far.
An elderly teacher desperately tried to separate the two students. The effort failed.
After knocking the victim down, the attacker told him, “Run, n, a, run.” The beaten student got back up, ran through the outdoor hallway, and went over the railing as the other student followed.
Student witnesses can be heard repeating, “Oh my God!” Camera footage afterward showed the victim lying motionless on the ground.
A witness who spoke to FOX 11 described the same chaos from below.
"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,"
Principal Marine Davtyan emailed parents the same day. The message did not describe a beating, a chase, or a fall from the fourth floor.
"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.’"
Campus gates remained closed until law enforcement authorized the school to reopen. That was the public posture: a lockdown for a medical emergency, while video and witnesses described punches, a slur-laced chase, and a student going over a railing four stories up.
Parents received a safety assurance. They did not receive a plain account of classmate violence caught on camera.
LAPD has kept both students unidentified. No age. No charging announcement against the student who threw the punches and ordered the victim to run.
The verified record, as it stands, is narrow and brutal: a series of punches, a knocked-down teenager, a failed teacher intervention, a racial slur paired with a command to run, a flight through an outdoor hallway, a fall from the fourth floor of Benjamin Franklin High School, and a body motionless on the ground.
Wednesday’s events left a family without a child and a campus locked down. They also left a basic accountability question hanging in public view, whether a classmate who beat another student on school property, on camera, faces swift and serious consequences, or whether the system treats the violence as background noise until the next lockdown email.
When a student can be punched down in a school hallway and end up dead on the pavement below, soft language and delayed accountability are not compassion. They are a failure of order.
