Another Mission teen has been arrested for an alleged assault on school grounds, marking the third student arrest RCMP have made this week following a widely reported video surfacing of two girls assaulting a fellow student.
The alleged assault was filmed at Mission Secondary School and posted online. The RCMP plan to use the 20-second video as evidence in their recommendations to Crown counsel, said Cpl. Jason Raaflaub of the Mission RCMP.
As of now, this appears to be a separate incident from the assault that took place on Monday, Jan. 11, according to Raaflaub.
“[The video shows] a Grade 9 student from Heritage Park Middle … beating up a female Grade 10 student from Mission Secondary School. She’s lying on the ground and the [Heritage Park student] is pounding on her,” he said.
The RCMP’s school liaison officer, Const. Johanna Robinson, met with the victim and her mother who provided statements, resulting in the arrest of the 14-year-old middle schooler on Jan. 15, Raaflaub said. He added she has since been released, but has been given a no-contact order with the victim.
The date of this assault has not been confirmed, but Robinson received word of the video the evening on Jan. 14, Raaflaub said, adding it likely took place the same day.
Robinson will be meeting with Mission School District administrators early next week to investigate further.
The students responsible for the alleged assault on Monday also attended Heritage Park Middle.
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Meanwhile, RCMP have also been made aware of a local Instagram account – seemingly frequented by Mission youth – which showed violent videos of students assaulting and bullying their peers. A complaint was made to the department this week regarding the account after outraged parents shared it to neighbourhood Facebook groups.
The Mission RCMP is aware of the account, but the videos have been deleted, Raaflaub said.
“[Robinson] is going to monitor it,” he said. “The file is kind of dead for now, unless something else comes up with it. But again, we are aware of it. If any more stupidity gets posted, it’ll be on a case-by-case basis.”
The Record was able to grab screenshots, and take descriptions of the videos before the account deleted them.
It should be noted, there is no way to confirm every video of assault or bullying posted to the account occurred in Mission. But in some there were identifiers, such as local geography and a Mission Twins baseball jacket.
The account showed fight videos, most with the aggressor (or aggressors) striking fellow youth after they’d given up; videos of teens curled up being beaten by students on top of them; a picture of a student shortly after being knocked unconscious; students being harassed and humiliated by other students and two videos showing people being assaulted with bear mace.
In one video, a student slurps an unidentified liquid off a school floor while other students laugh, and in another, a student is forced to kiss a bully’s shoe.
The account also showed the raw footage of 14-year-old Carson Crimeni shortly before his death. Crimeni died of an overdose at a Langley skatepark in 2019, while other teens laughed and filmed him with their cell phones while he was in distress.
Mission School District Superintendent Angus Wilson said he was aware of the Instagram account prior to Monday’s assault, and the district and its partners have taken steps to investigate its content.
Wilson said that Safer Schools Together – a company that assists school districts with the identification, tracking and intervention of bullying (and specializes in digital content) – was able to get the videos removed from Instagram.
“If a video comes to our attention, we send it to the RCMP and vice versa,” Wilson said. “SST often sends us video and websites to investigate on a semi-regular basis. They also take down violent content as they find it.”
RELATED: 2 students arrested in assault of transgender girl at Mission middle school
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This video on the Instagram account showed two youths beating and kicking another student, who curled into a ball to defend himself. He did not fight back.
This video on the Instagram account showed two different youths use bear mace on a person, who was walking away from a larger group. The group laughs after the person is sprayed.
