I held my breath as I watched four girls surround Sammy. The video didn’t have any sound. There was no way to know what was being said, but the body language wasn’t friendly.
The crowding continued for a few minutes, and then Sammy got up to leave. Good, I thought. Walk away. Sammy made it through the wall of girls. She started toward the dish room window with her tray, but the others followed her. Words were still being said, but Sammy didn’t respond. She kept her head down, returned the tray and silverware, and started walking toward the door.
Other kids in the lunchroom were now paying attention. They could sense the situation escalating. They stopped eating and watched. A few stood on their seats and said something, egging on the group hounding Sammy.
Then Sammy walked out the door.
“That’s where this one ends.” Schmitty leaned over and pressed the “Eject” button. The tray slid out, and he replaced that disc with another. “But this picks it up in the hallway.”
The second disc started, and Schmitty pressed the button to forward it ahead. “We’ll just jump to the right time.” He checked his notes, the images flashed, and he clicked “Play.” “Here she comes.”
I felt my stomach turn and my hands go cold as I watched Sammy enter the hallway followed, half a second later, by a gaggle of girls. They made it about five yards when the leader—a big girl wearing some sort of purple outfit—edged closer to Sammy. It looked like she whispered something in her ear, and then Sammy turned and pushed her away.
That was when the fight started.
The big girl threw a punch, and it caught Sammy on the right side of her face. She raised her arms to cover herself. Then another girl ran forward and pushed her to the floor. Another one kicked Sammy’s side. They circled her as Sammy got up, swinging blindly.
More kids, likely drawn by the commotion, streamed into the hallway.
Schmitty stopped the video. “It goes on like this until the teachers and school resource officer come to break it up.” He pressed a small button and the disc ejected. Schmitty leaned over to get it and put the disc back in the file, but I stopped him.
“I want to watch it.”
“But you can’t really see what’s going on from the angle of the security camera. Pretty much the same as that one on YouTube that I showed you before.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “It’s my daughter, and I need to see what happened.”
He hesitated and then loaded the disc back into the computer. We watched the rest of the chaos play out.
When it was over, I slumped back down in my chair. “What now?”
He shook his head. “Unless you want us to, there’s not going to be any charges. We could get a couple of the girls for assault, but the fat girl is claiming self-defense.”
“Self-defense?” I shook my head in disbelief. “How’s that self-defense?”
“Legally, it’s not,” said Schmitty. “But they’ve concocted a whole story about threats that Samantha had made toward them. They say that she was bullying them, and that your daughter was going to come get them with some older boys, so they all decided to stand up to her first before anything happened.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I closed my eyes. “Sammy was surrounded.” I said it more to myself than to Schmitty. The peace that I had felt that morning was long gone, and it took everything in my power to keep my cool.
I opened my eyes and saw that Schmitty was looking at me with a helpless expression. “I’m only saying what they told our investigator.”
“And the beat-down. That was all in self-defense.” My voice was louder than I intended.
“Of course it wasn’t.” Then Schmitty leaned in and softly repeated himself. “Of course it wasn’t, but we gotta be smart. You’ve gotta be smart. With your brother on the ballot and you maybe making a run for something else, I hear, we should make this go away. No good is gonna come from this.” He sat back. “A juvenile judge isn’t going to do anything to any of these girls. Maybe some community service, and what does that do? Nothing. Just riles the crazy family up and makes your daughter relive it. Imagine your daughter being cross-examined by some asshole defense attorney.” Schmitty stopped himself. “No offense.”
I let the comment pass. “So you don’t want to press charges against them?”
“No,” Schmitty said. “I don’t, and neither should you.” He began to pack up the notes and police reports, pushing the few small stacks back into the brown folder. “We start doing that, then they start claiming special treatment, and then it’s in the newspapers and we get pressure to charge Sammy. Best thing to do is to leave it alone.”
“Leave it alone,” I repeated dully.
“Good.” He shrugged. “And you’re not gonna send her back to that school, right?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not sending her back there, but I’m sure those girls will soon find a different target. Can’t be on top without somebody on the bottom.”
Schmitty nodded. “Just like real life.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The rest of the week passed without anything unusual, except the continuing heat and humidity. Summer wouldn’t quit. By mid-September, the heat was supposed to have broken, but it hadn’t. When I arrived at the courthouse for Cecil Bates’s trial on Monday morning, the temperature hovered around eighty-two degrees, and I could feel the sweat soak through my shirt.
Judge Polansky had scheduled five cases for trial on this Monday morning. Of course it wasn’t possible to begin five trials at the same time. It was a hedge. He wanted to clear as many cases from his calendar as possible. Knowing that some defendants wouldn’t show up and others would likely plead guilty the moment the jury was called into the room, he called five instead of one, thus potentially moving that many more widgets through the law factory in a single morning.
Sometimes it didn’t, but usually the hedge worked.
The clerk banged down the gavel. “All rise,” she said. “The Honorable Saul Polansky presiding.”
Judge Polansky entered the courtroom from a side door, walked up a few steps, and sat in the large leather chair behind the bench. “Please have a seat.” He turned to his computer—a relatively new addition to courtroom—punched a few keys to log in, and called up the cases on the morning docket.
To his clerk: “OK.”
The clerk stood. “State of Missouri versus Tyrone O’Neil.”
Mr. O’Neil and his defense attorney walked from the back of the courtroom to the front as the prosecutor stood. When they were all situated, the judge instructed them to note their appearances for the record. Both complied, and then Judge Polansky asked the defense attorney about the status of the case.
“My client would like to plead guilty, Your Honor.”
Judge Polansky allowed a smile to escape, ever so briefly, and then listened as they outlined the plea agreement, waived the defendant’s right to a trial, and laid a factual basis for the guilty plea. The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing in three weeks and then moved on to the next case.