Marshfield Student to Face Charges Based on YouTube Video
Posted on: Friday, 9 May 2008, 09:00 CDT
By SYDNEY SCHWARTZ
MARSHFIELD - Police are seeking charges against a Furnace Brook Middle School student for allegedly assaulting a classmate after school.
The incident took place after students recorded a planned, consensual fight in the woods along Steamboat Drive, police and school officials said.
About 50 students gathered after an early release day to watch the fight, which later appeared online on YouTube. School officials said they learned of the assault while investigating the recorded fight.
Unlike the fight posted on YouTube, the assault was not planned, officials said. The student facing charges, an eighth-grader whose name was not released, did not appear in the video.
Students also gathered to watch a fight after an early release day in April. That fight also was put on YouTube.
Both videos have since been removed from the Web site.
Furnace Brook School Principal Alfred Makein said: "This (fight) was planned. Students were pressured into participating. There was a plan for someone to record it. It was posted on the Internet without the knowledge of the students."
The Marshfield incident is the latest example of YouTube being used as a tool for evidence-gathering.
A University of Colorado freshman was ticketed last week for setting off fireworks on campus after officers said they saw him do it in a YouTube video.
A Milton man was charged in November with animal cruelty after he and two others allegedly decapitated a pet rabbit at Rye Beach in New Hampshire in a YouTube video.
Makein said students involved in the Marshfield YouTube video were not disciplined because the event occurred outside school.
He said he sent a letter to parents and spoke to parents whose children were directly involved, including the student who posted the video on the Internet.
Reach Sydney Schwartz at sschwartz@ledger.com.
Originally published by By SYDNEY SCHWARTZ, The Patriot Ledger.
(c) 2008 Patriot Ledger, The; Quincy, Mass.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Patriot Ledger, The; Quincy, Mass.
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