YouTube as Witness

Lisa Kelley parked her car in front of the local drugstore and waited for her friend, Victoria “Tori” Lindsay, to appear. Tori had called just a few minutes earlier, saying she needed a ride home. But when she climbed into the front seat, Tori was battered, bruised, and bloody.

Kelley was shocked. When she asked what had happened, 16-year-old Tori recounted a tale of terror and betrayal. Five of her so-called friends, ranging in age from 14 to 17, had assaulted her while another girl videotaped the beating. These weren’t just any girls; these were fellow cheerleaders on her high school squad. To make sure the girls had time to finish the job, two other “friends,” Stephen Schumaker and Zachary Ashley, stood guard at the front stoop of the house in case anyone showed up asking what all the commotion was about.

The voices in the background of the video told the story. As the girls took turns pummeling Tori, they screamed at her, blaming her for spreading rumors about them.

“It’s not fair, Brittini!” Tori yelled.

“It’s perfectly fair! It’s one-on-one!” someone replied off-camera.

“You have to fight back. Fight back!” Brittini Hardcastle said as she punched her again. “What, you gonna cry like a little girl?”

“Ooh, yeah, baby. Ooh, yeah!” someone taunted in the background.

Britney Mayes was keeping time. “Seventeen seconds left. Make it good.”

For a few weeks before the ordeal, Tori had been staying with her friend Mercades Nichols and her family in Lakeland, Florida. Tori had been struggling with some problems at home and figured the time away from her family would give her a chance to sort things out. By March 30, 2008, Tori was ready to head home. She spent the day at Cocoa Beach with another friend, Christine Dorsett, who dropped her off in the front of Nichols’s house.

After the day at the beach, Tori was all smiles when she walked in the front door. Nichols and Hardcastle were waiting for her near the doorway. They were yelling, “Get out! Go home!” It didn’t take long for Tori to turn around and run out with the two girls trailing behind her. Then Kayla Hassell suddenly appeared and tagged along behind Nichols and Hardcastle. Luckily, Dorsett was still there; she told the girls to leave Tori alone.

Once everyone had calmed down, Dorsett asked the girls pointblank if there would be any more trouble. She didn’t like the thought of leaving Tori behind, but she had to be somewhere and the situation appeared to be under control.

After Dorsett left, Tori went back into the house to gather her belongings and call Kelley for a ride. When she entered her room, April Cooper was waiting with clenched fists. Then Mayes arrived with a camcorder, and Nichols trailed behind her. Hardcastle and Hassell followed Nichols, while Cara Murphy blocked the door. Together, the girls goaded Cooper into hitting Tori. She did just that, again and again.

Tori felt the fists pounding her face. Then Cooper grabbed her head and slammed it into the wall, causing her to black out. When she regained consciousness, she found herself on the living room couch surrounded by the six girls. As she struggled to get up, Hardcastle attacked her. Then, Mayes held her down, and Hassell took over hitting her. Tori finally managed to get loose and run for the door, but Nichols got there first and blocked her escape.

“You want me to leave, I’ll go home,” Tori cried.

“No, you’re not leaving,” Hardcastle yelled, knocking her into a corner by the door, next to a glass shelf filled with knickknacks.

“Don’t hit the shelves!” Nichols yelled.

One of the boys at the front door told the girls to keep the noise down; the neighbors were getting suspicious and were peering out of their windows.

Tori made another run for the door, but one by one, the girls punched and taunted her, telling her how they planned on posting the video on Myspace and YouTube.

When the beating finally ended about 30 minutes later, the girls forced Tori to pose for group photos with them. When the photo session was over, Nichols threw a bag at Tori that contained her belongings and told her to sit in Nichols’s grandmother’s car, which was parked in the driveway. Dazed and fearful, Tori limped to the car and climbed into the passenger seat; Mayes and Hardcastle climbed into the backseat as Nichols settled in behind the wheel. In an unprecedented gesture of kindness, one of the girls gave Tori a soda; the other consoled her half-heartedly, saying her injuries weren’t all that bad. Nichols told Tori not to breathe a word about this to anyone. Tori snapped back, saying she was going to tell her parents. With that, the girls told her this beating would be nothing compared to the beating she would get if she said anything.

Tori decided to play along and promised to keep her mouth shut. She asked if she could use someone’s cell phone to call for a ride home from wherever the girls decided to drop her off. Nichols dropped Tori off at the drugstore, where she waited for Kelley.

When the girls finally made it to Kelley’s house, Tori called the police. The following is a partial transcript of the 911 call:

Dispatcher: “Polk County Sheriff’s Office, this is Brenda. What is the nature of your emergency?”

Tori (crying): “I just got jumped.”

Dispatcher: “You just got what, jumped?”

Tori: “Yes Ma’am.”

Dispatcher: “And do you know who did it?”

Tori: “Yes, I do.”

Dispatcher: “What’s your name? Okay and where are you?”

Tori [muted]: “I am at my friend’s house.”

Dispatcher: “Pardon?”

Tori: “I am at my friend’s house in Lakeland. Do you need the address?”

Dispatcher: “Yes, ma’am.”

Tori: “Okay hold on.”

Friend’s mother: “Hi I am the Mom. I am not her mom, but the friend’s mom.”

Dispatcher: “That’s okay. Is she hurt?”

Friend’s mother: “Yeah I think she—she has a big old knot on the side of her eye.”

Dispatcher: “Okay. And who was it that jumped her?”

Friend’s mom (to Tori): “They need to know who jumped you.”

Tori (in background): “I am going to write all the names down.”

Friend’s mom: “She is going to write all the names down.”

Dispatcher: “So there was more than one?”

Friend’s mom: “Yeah. There were six girls. If not more, she said.”

Mrs. Kelley gave the dispatcher a list of Tori’s injuries: Her mouth was bleeding, her eye was swollen, and one of her teeth was broken.

Kelley took Tori home and she was reunited with her family. When police arrived at Tori’s home to interview her and her mother, Talisa, a few days later on April 2, the officer reported, “I witnessed Victoria to have two black eyes, as well as to have bruises on her arms and legs.”

He took photos of Tori’s injuries and then sat down with her and her mother to take their statements. Tori told him that before she went to Cocoa Beach for the day with Dorsett, she’d argued with Nichols, who was upset that Tori had used her razor and hairbrush without permission. While Tori was at the beach, Nichols sent her several angry text messages. One text accused her of owing Nichols $4 for gas. Oddly, the tone of the messages suddenly softened a few minutes later. Nichols texted Tori, asking when she was coming home. Although Tori was a little suspicious, she was also relieved that Nichols didn’t seem to be holding a grudge. As it turned out, that wasn’t the case.

At a news conference in front of Tori’s Florida home, Tori’s father, Patrick Lindsay, said, “In the emergency room, I didn’t even recognize my own daughter. I just walked in and held her. I didn’t want her to see me weep.”

By the end of that day, six of the teens who had participated in the beating were arrested and placed in holding cells at the sheriff’s office.

“I was in my office next to the holding cell and could hear the girls laughing, joking, playing,” according to one officer’s notes in the report file, “and at one point making the comment, ‘Guess we’re not going to the beach tomorrow.’”

While an officer was completing Hassell’s booking sheet, he remembers her asking, “Am I going to be out of jail in time for cheer-leading practice, because I do competitive cheering” and could not miss a single practice.

At one point, the girls said if they were going to get in trouble, then “Steve-O” needed to be arrested, too. The next morning, Schumaker was apprehended and arrested at his parents’ home for his part in the ordeal. Ashley was arrested on July 12.

When officers interviewed Nichols’s grandmother, Mary Nichols, she told them she didn’t know about the fight until later that same night, when Nichols made it sound as if it had been just a little tiff. After talking with Nichols’s mother, she found out how vicious the fight was, saw the video, and turned it over to the sheriff’s office.

Nichols’s mother, Christina Garcia, told the officers that the girls didn’t like Tori and were upset because she had reportedly posted nasty comments about them on Myspace.

“She said she was going to kick their you-know-what’s,” Garcia said, adding that Tori had reportedly called them “slutty,” though no such comment was ever found on Myspace or elsewhere.

What Garcia didn’t tell officers was that she had taken her daughter’s cell phone and some other items out of the house. When officers found out about this, they called her and explained that if she was hiding the cell phone from the police, she was actually withholding evidence, which was a crime. She needed to turn the phone over to the sheriff’s office immediately.

Garcia refused to cooperate and even swore at the police. When the officer told her that she could be arrested for tampering with evidence, she promptly hung up on him.

Apparently, Garcia soon had a change of heart. She called the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and turned the cell phone in to them later that day.

On April 8, Nichols’s home computer was seized as evidence, as well as the other suspects’ cell phones. The police also contacted Myspace, and the accounts of all eight suspects, along with Tori’s, were frozen so authorities could review them and use any posts as evidence in the case.

The beating changed Tori in many ways: She had a concussion and suffered permanent hearing loss in her left ear, blurred vision in her left eye, and frequent nightmares.

All eight suspects were charged with felony battery and felony false imprisonment. Hardcastle, Mayes, and Nichols were also charged with felony kidnapping for forcing Tori into the car, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

During a press conference in June 2008, Nichols’s lawyer James Holz asked, “Why is my client facing life in prison when the victim got two black eyes?”

Nichols’s woes escalated in August 2008 when she was arrested on multiple counts of aggravated stalking, aggravated assault, and battery, charges unrelated to Tori’s case. Nichols’s ex-boyfriend, Jacob Johns, claimed that between October 31, 2007, and March 28, 2008, she allegedly stalked him online and in person, and stabbed him with a pen. She was booked into Polk County Jail and charged with two counts of felony aggravated stalking, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and three counts of misdemeanor battery. She was denied bail.

On January 20, 2009, Mayes pled guilty to one charge of misdemeanor battery in Tori’s case. She received a year of probation and was required to complete 50 hours of community service.

On March 6, Nichols pled guilty to battery charges and tampering with a witness in Tori’s beating case, and she also pled guilty to the charges of battery, assault, and violation of an injunction in the stalking of her ex-boyfriend. She received 3 years’ probation and 100 hours of community service. She was also required to write a letter of apology to Tori and pay $17,000 in restitution to Tori’s family. Under the terms of the final verdict, she could never contact Tori or her family, and she could not have an account on any social networking sites, including Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube, during her probation period.

On March 11, Cooper pled guilty to two counts of misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to 2 years’ probation in Tori’s case. Hassell pled guilty to one count of misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to a year of probation. In addition, both girls had to write a letter of apology to Tori, could never contact Tori or her family, and could not have profiles on social networking sites during their probations. They were also ordered to pay Tori’s family $1,752.35, though terms of the case didn’t disclose the details of this payment.

On March 20, Hardcastle pled guilty to false imprisonment and battery and was sentenced to 15 days in jail minus time served (10 days), and 3 years’ probation. The reason for the stiffer sentence is that on the video she was clearly the one who hit Tori the most. Before she was sentenced, Hardcastle said, “I am very sorry for what I did and nothing will ever excuse it. Me and her didn’t get along, but she didn’t deserve what she got.”

Charges against Murphy, Schumaker, and Ashley were eventually dropped due to lack of sufficient evidence. Tori’s parents took her out of high school, and she was homeschooled after the ordeal.

“These websites are creating a space for criminal activity, beating, fights,” Tori’s father said. “Myspace,YouTube, MTV’s Jackass—they are enticing our children and desensitizing our children. Now, if they create the best shock video, they are the heroes. They think it is top dollar.”

Three minutes of the half-hour video actually ended up on YouTube (you can see it there to this day at www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHmnzzUJVRA), released by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. While the six girls ultimately got their wish to have the video posted on YouTube, they could never have foreseen it being shown as a cautionary tale for parents and teens.

“Our goal is not only to deal with this issue, but to try to educate parents across the state and across the nation that this is what your children are watching,” Polk County sheriff Grady Judd said about releasing the video. “This is what some children are participating in. And we as a society have got to say, ‘This has to stop,’ because if we desensitize our children to this today, then what’s next tomorrow?”

Tori is just one victim whose beating was videotaped for a few minutes of glory in the spotlight.

***

In Thomasville, North Carolina, Daniel Lee Hopkins, 49, thought it would be fun to take part in a video of his 17-year-old son and a 15-year-old boy fighting. All three were arrested on June 10, 2010.

Police had received an anonymous call on June 3 from someone claiming that a video called Dump Fight had been posted on YouTube. It appeared to depict two minors fighting while other people stood around and urged them on.

“We got a tip and went to YouTube and watched it,” sheriff David Grice said. “From there we were able to issue a warrant. We’ve got video of the dad there encouraging [the fight].”

Hopkins was charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and one count of disorderly conduct. His son and the other boy were charged with one count of simple affray and one count of disorderly conduct.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Grice.

It’s not just happening in the U.S., either. In 2010, two teen boys from a high school in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, were shown in a video being egged on to fight each other. The video was discovered in May 2011 when someone sent the YouTube link to Hampton Park Secondary College principal Sue Glenn. The video had been posted in January 2011.

“I was completely unaware of this incident or video. However, on now seeing it, I am totally appalled,” said Glenn. “This is not the behavior we accept at Hampton Park Secondary, which has 1,300 students who are well behaved and great kids. I will be taking this matter extremely seriously and definitely investigating this incident and then taking the appropriate action.”

Although the two students fighting in the video no longer attended the school, the onlookers were investigated concerning their involvement. In the video, the witnesses encourage the two boys with shouts of “Go crazy at him” and “Do it, do it” along with a lot of “ooohs” and “whoas,” getting louder when one boy’s nose starts to bleed.

Victoria’s minister for education Martin Dixon noted that having the videos of schoolyard fights and bullying posted made it more difficult to dole out the proper discipline.

“We still have a real issue out there in our schools and we still need to be doing more in terms of educating our children and teachers and parents,” said Dixon. “It shows an abject ignorance to what bullying and violence is doing to victims.”

By May 2011, the damaging consequences of this incident and others like it triggered the approval of a $14.5 million Australian anti-bullying program that is designed to prevent such behavior from ever starting.

Defendants charged in the videotaped beating of Tori Lindsay: [Top row, from left] April Cooper, Brittini Hardcastle, Kayla Hassell, Britney Mayes; [Bottom row, from left] Cara Murphy, Mercades Nichols, Zachary Ashley, Stephen Schumaker) [Courtesy of Polk County Sheriff’s Office]

 

Daniel Lee Hopkins, who videotaped his sons fighting [Courtesy of Davidson County Sheriff’s Office]