It's a disturbing assault at a Valley high school, caught on camera, and shared with many in the student body.
In the video recorded at Mesa Westwood, you see the caption, "Someone beat this please." You see a girl showing the camera what appears to be an open-faced burrito with sauce all over it, and she is smiling.
Then she casually walks over to a girl sitting on a retaining wall looking at her cell phone. The girl does not see the student armed with the burrito approaching. Then you see the suspect slam the girl in the face with the food with enough force enough to knock the student back, off the retaining wall, and onto the ground.
Josh Buch reached out to ABC15 Arizona saying the child assaulted in that video was his daughter.
"I wanted to cry, I really wanted to cry," said Buch about the incident. What he said upset him the most was how security at the school handled what happened.
"It's like an everyday thing for them. Like they see this every day. It saddens my heart that people are used to this. That people are used to the aggression, the anger, the animosity at school. For what reason?"
The victim, who asked us to not show her face, said she suffered bruises to her face, a broken wrist, had hives, and needed to have her eyes flushed out due to the hot sauce on the food.
What upset the victim more than the assault was the suspect allegedly shared the video of the assault with other high school students.
"I don't want to go back to school because everybody is laughing at that video. Everybody has it, and I feel humiliated. I am the laughing joke of the school," said the victim.
Her father said this assault was much bigger than what had happened to his daughter. He called it a culture of bullying, violence, and aggression that seemed rampant not just at Westwood High School but at almost every school in the Valley.
He said it spoke to the national crisis of children lashing out at each other.
The victim told ABC15 Arizona she had been told the suspect who attacked her had also been a victim of bullying herself.
"Her excuse to the police officer was 'I get bullied, I'm at my wit's end. So I lashed out. Nobody did anything for me, so I lashed out,'" said the 16-year old.
Buch said while he felt a lot of anger toward the suspect, he hoped she could get the help she needed.
"I fear for her. I fear she could be a harm to herself or society if she's going to act out like that to an innocent child at school because she is a victim of bullying and she has no proper channels to talk to," said Buch.
His daughter said she barely knew the suspect, and she did not know why the girl had targeted her personally. She said the incident had left her emotionally scarred.
"I know I can run home and talk to my family, but some people kill themselves because they don't have anybody to talk to. This is why people kill themselves. What she did was really uncalled for. I don't even want to go to school anymore," said the victim. "School bullying should stop. They should really put an end to it. People are killing themselves over it or they're going psycho, and they bring weapons to school and want to hurt everybody else."
Chilling words coming out of a high school sophomore.
ABC15 Arizona took these concerns to school officials with Mesa Public Schools.
Even though they were closed for the Easter holiday, a spokeswoman did respond, saying: "School administration took immediate action. The student seen in the video as well as others involved have received appropriate consequences."
School officials added: "We have support available for all students. For example, our high schools have multiple student advisors trained to assist with academic and behavioral concerns. Each high school also has a full-time social worker who can provide individual and small group counseling, as well as refer students for external support as needed. Our staff is always on the lookout for students who may need support services."
