MIAMI – Surveillance video shows an angry mother storming into the Bethel Junior Academy on Thursday morning in Florida City.
Thirteen-year-old Nehemiah Johnson, a student at the Christian private school, said the woman’s son was a “bully.” He said the woman wanted to punish him over an altercation the two boys had earlier.
Nehemiah said she used a brown belt to strike him before she calmly walked out of the school at 32920 Redland Rd. Nehemiah’s mother, Zendre Pollard, was outraged. She said the attack was at about 11:30 a.m.
“It was hard to watch. I don’t want anybody’s child to go through anything like this. It was very hard to watch. I’m at the point where my child should have been protected,” Pollard said. “How can a parent get that far and start swinging at my child?”
Nehemiah said he suffered injuries to his lip and arm.
Pollard said the woman’s son was a bully who had “fat-shamed” Nehemiah. In response, Nehemiah said he had picked up “the bully” and “dropped him.”
Pollard filed a police report and attempted to get a restraining order on the woman at about 2 p.m. A judge declined it at first and later granted it in response to a motion for reconsideration. She and her son are meeting with police and detectives in order to move the case forward, she told Local 10 News.
Pollard said she wants to see the woman who hit her son arrested for child abuse. Representatives of the Bethel Junior Academy declined to comment for this story, but Pollard said they did apologize to her in person. She, however, said she hasn’t heard from them since that apology.