Early last month, a video of a teen brutally beating 16-year-old Kaylee Gain and pounding her head against the pavement went viral, prompting nationwide outrage fueled by conservative social media accounts.
The video, shot near Hazelwood East High School, where Gain and her assailant are both students, appears to have been first widely circulated by the right-wing social media presence “Libs of TikTok” which is famous for its conspiracy theories and rage bait.
Now Gain’s assailant faces a hearing in juvenile court, police have referred eight others for possible charges in connection with the fight and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has launched an investigation into the school district. Gain remains hospitalized, though she is out of the intensive care unit.
Misinformation surrounding the fight is swirling and even Bailey has spewed incorrect facts about the incident. Here’s a round-up of what we know to be true.
A Brutal Beating
The fight occurred on March 8, after school hours and approximately a quarter mile from Hazelwood East, according to an attorney for the school district.
On March 10, Libs of TikTok posted a video of the fight to X saying: “GRAPHIC: A student in @HazelwoodSD is in the hospital in critical condition after being brutally beaten with her head smashed against the pavement by a mob of students. Multiple people watch and do nothing. You won’t hear about this story on the MSM” [Mainstream Media].
Despite the account’s claims, St. Louis media, including the Post-Dispatch, KSDK, and KMOV, soon covered the fight extensively.
The video opens with the two teenage girls appearing to square off against each other in a residential street. Quickly, though, the 15-year-old is on top of Gain, hands around her collar and repeatedly smashing her head into the street, as the RFT previously reported. The teen twitches and convulses on the street as several other peripheral brawls break out among the dozen or so young people around her.
The Aftermath — and the Catalyst
Gain suffered traumatic brain injuries in the beating and was in critical condition for more than a week. Her family posted an update to her GoFundMe on March 22 saying Gain is stable and was moved out of the ICU. An attorney for the family more recently told NBC News that she has no recollection of the fight and has limited speech. She cannot walk on her own, he said.
The day after the fight, 15-year-old Maurnice DeClue was arrested and charged with assault. Her family tells the St. Louis Post Dispatch that she is a "diligent and helpful" honor-roll student.
Since DeClue’s arrest, eight more teens have been referred to family court and may face charges in connection to the fight. The teens range in age from 14 to 17 years old. Four are male, and four are female.
It is unclear what led to the brawl.
However, KSDK reported recently that, according to DeClue’s lawyer, Gain had been suspended from school after a fight on March 7 — just one day before the beating that was captured on video. “She was suspended from school for fighting someone else," attorney Greg Smith said of Gain. "And despite that, found her way back towards the neighborhood around the high school the following day at dismissal time."
An attorney for Gain’s family confirmed the suspension.
DeClue’s family has stated that DeClue had no previous involvement with the juvenile justice system.
The 15-year-old was "described by her teachers as a diligent and helpful student who never caused any disruptions," Tina DeClue told the Post-Dispatch.
A Political Fight
Libs of TikTok and other conservative social media presences (including Attorney General Bailey) have stated that the school’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies led to the incident.
Despite seemingly making her a martyr in an agenda to discredit DEI, in nearly every post about Gain Libs of TikTok spells her name wrong (it’s Kaylee, not Kailee).
“Hazelwood School District won an award for their DEI initiatives and have a history of discriminating against white people,” the account said in a post to X.
Part of what is fueling conservative outrage over the fight is that Gain is white and her assailant in the video is Black.
The account’s repeated tirades against Hazelwood’s DEI initiatives seem to have spurred Bailey to action and inspired his latest headline grab.
Bailey announced on March 22 that his office will be investigating how the Hazelwood School District's “radical DEI programs resulted in such despicable safety failures.”
That’s even though, as the RFT’s Ryan Krull has reported, the only connection between the district’s DEI policies and the attack is St. Louis County police officers’ failures to cooperate with them. The district asked that officers working in the school complete 10 hours of DEI training. The Hazelwood, Florissant and St. Louis County police departments balked, and the school resource officer program at Hazelwood East has reportedly been on hold since.
Cindy Reeds Ormsby, attorney for the district, fact-checked Bailey with a scathing letter dated March 26. She pointed out that Bailey got the date, location and setting of the fight completely wrong and emphasized that it took place after school and off school property.
She notes that his idea of investigating this as a diversity, equity and inclusion matter is … an interesting choice.
“The Statement of Solidarity you refer to in your correspondence is not board policy. You have failed to identify a single ‘race-based policy’ that has led to the absence of [school resource officers] and how such policy was prioritized over student safety,” she writes.
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