NEW ROCHELLE, NY — A 19-second video is circulating on social media which shows a violent melee in a middle school hallway in New Rochelle. There may be additional videos of the incident.
School officials have declined to say whether any of the students seen assaulting other students in the video were disciplined.
In contrast, WNBC News has reportedthat White Plains Superintendent Dr. Joseph Ricca shared his concerns about a recent incident of student-on-student violence recorded on video in his District — and disclosed that the students were facing disciplinary action.
Four Westchester County students are facing discipline after an attack inside a high school bathroom hit social media. A White Plains High School student can be seen on video getting slapped in the face, punched and kicked while on the floor.
New Rochelle Police were called to Albert Leonard Middle School on Tuesday, February 15. A police department spokesperson declined to comment on the incident, but NRPD received at least one Assault complaint, according to police records seen by Talk of the Sound.
What appears to be more than a half-dozen Albert Leonard Middle School students — male and female— can be seen on the video wrestling, grabbing, punching, screaming, kicking, pulling hair, throwing other students to the ground, pinning them to the ground while other students stand over them, punching them.
As one student is thrown into a locker, another student grabs her assailant by the hair and yanks on it; the assailant is then hurled to the ground and briefly pinned to the floor by the first student, a girl.
Another student, a boy, can be seen, repeatedly throwing punches, looking for more victims, then attacking them, including attacking girls.
One boy appears to attempt to intervene to stop one of several ongoing assaults.
Numerous students, holding up their mobile phones, appear to be recording the violence unfolding in front of them.
No adults are visible in the video. None intervened during the video.
The students faces are not visible either because they are wearing masks, the video is blurred, or because the video is shot from behind.
There have been a series of police incidents at the school since the start of the new year.
On January 12, police were called for a Dispute. On February 8, police were called for a Harassment complaint. On February 10, school officials reported finding one or more Swastikas at the school (a recurrence going back to the 2018-19 school year when 20 Swastikas were found at three schools over an 8-month period: New Rochelle High School, Isaac E. Young Middle School and New Rochelle High School). On February 15, police were called on the Assault complaint. On February 16, police were called on a Harassment complaint.
Parents have reported their children coming home from ALMS talking about frequent violent incidents at the school, mostly incidents of student-on-student fights.
Over the past four years, students, and staff from the public schools have attracted national attention to New Rochelle as an increasingly dangerous place: stabbings, student-on-student rapes, teacher-on-student rapes, shootings, arson, assaults, weapons possession, and gang activity have become the norm. So much so that last month, after a 16-year-old boy used a “ghost gun” pistol to shoot and kill a fellow high school student on a street corner two blocks from an elementary school, there was no police briefing, no school press conference and little media coverage.
Two Very Different Responses to Very Similar Murders
The only press statement issued by the District on the day of the shooting falsely denied the deceased 16-year-old boy was a student at New Rochelle High School (he was). No correction was ever issued. That communications failure is reportedly the subject of an internal investigation.
New Rochelle BOE Investigating Internal Response to West End Shooting, Sources
A belated town hall meeting was reluctantly set up after complaints from some in the Latino community about the disparate response to the murder of a Hispanic student in 2022 and a White student in 2018. Held more than two weeks after the shooting — not at City Hall which houses the District’s central office or New Rochelle High School where both 16-year-olds were enrolled but at Christopher Columbus Elementary School, an out-of-the-way location with little on-site parking and often less available parking on the narrow streets surrounding the building.
Only a few dozen people attended; more than half the scheduled meeting time was devoted to speeches from the dais; the parents of the victim walked out on the meeting, directly past Mayor Noam Bramson.
Impressions of a Failed Town Hall Meeting in New Rochelle in the Wake of the West End Shooting
Albert Leonard Middle School started the school year with new leadership after first-time Principal Camille Edwards-Thomas replaced longtime Principal John Barnes last summer.
There are reports of staff attendance issues at buildings throughout the District, including Albert Leonard Middle School — up to 20 staff members absent at ALMS on a given day for a variety of reasons.
Classes are being cancelled due to a shortage of substitute teachers, sources say. As a result, students are sent to the cafeteria or auditorium, not getting “seat time” or services.
It appears no one wants to talk about any of it.
New Rochelle Schools Superintendent Jonathan P. Raymond declined to comment on any of the police incidents at Albert Leonard Middle School or the issue of chronic staff absences. New Rochelle Board of Education President Julia Muggia-Ochs and ALMS Principal Camille Edwards-Thomas were copied on an email asking questions about issues at the school.
The New Rochelle Police Department has not responded to multiple requests for details on police incidents at ALMS since the return after Christmas break.
EDITOR’S NOTE: After the melee video was uploaded to Talk of the Sound social media platforms, a woman who did not identify herself but claiming to be a family member of one of the students depicted in the video called this reporter to demand the video be removed from Facebook. I told her I was not inclined to comply with such a demand generally but in particular coming from someone unknown to me. Upset at not getting her way, she and two other unidentified people took turns on the telephone making various threats, screaming, using foul language and otherwise attempting to bully this reporter into removing the video or “you’ll have a problem”. Soon after the callers abruptly ended the call, the melee video was flagged on Facebook, ironically, for allegedly violating the company’s policy on Bullying. Facebook’s complaint process is notoriously flawed requiring the content creator go through a tedious appeals process. In this case, the process began by requiring I read every line of the company’s lengthy, legalistic, Bullying policy. Although the melee video quite clearly does not violate the Bullying policy, there is no one to talk to about a bogus complaint. The appeals process is cumbersome and slow — it can take months. Until that process plays out, the video is available here and our other non-Facebook platforms.