An alarming video taken at a high school track meet last week in Virginia shows a runner bashing her opponent over the head with her baton as they near the finish line. The incident reportedly left the teen with a concussion and the other girl receiving online threats while insisting it was all an accident.
The video shows one teenager overtaking the other during the Indoor Track State Championships on March 4 when the surpassed runner raises her baton and strikes her opponent in the back of her head, causing the other girl to stumble and fall.
“I was so in disbelief, I didn’t even know. I didn’t know what had happened,” Kaelen Tucker of Brookville High School told local station WSET of her reaction to the baton’s blow. “I just know I got hit in the head, and I just fell off the track.”
Tucker stumbled to the ground and, after an examination, was found to be suffering a slight concussion and a possible skull fracture, her mother Tamarro Tucker told the station.
Her opponent’s team, IC Norcom High School, was immediately disqualified from the event.
“We don’t know all of the actions that are going to be taken at this time but I think my whole thing was, no apology,” her mother told WSET. “No coaches, no athlete, no anything. Even if it was an accident, which I don’t believe it was an accident, but nothing.”
Her opponent Alaila Everett, of IC Norcom High School, told WAVY that she didn’t intend to hit Tucker and only struck her accidentally due to their close proximity, which caused her to lose her balance. She said she also didn’t get a chance to apologize in person.
“She was so close to me … I lost my balance and when I pumped my arms again she got hit,” she told the station.
Everett said she went on to finish the race but did try to check on Tucker after. Because people were tending to her, Everett said she gave them space, which her coach encouraged her to do.
“I went to my coach and he said he was handling it,” she said.
Everett insisted that it’s not in her character to intentionally harm someone like that and she broke down in tears when asked about strangers attacking and judging her on social media over what happened.
“I can admit from the video that it does look purposeful, but I know my intentions and I would never hit somebody on purpose because of jealousy,” she said. “I’ve never been in a fight, I’ve always been on honor roll, I never get calls home. So just people making, off a 9-second video, they’re assuming my character. Calling me ghetto, racist slurs, death threats, all of this because of a 9-second video.”
Everett’s mother also insisted to WAVY that her daughter wouldn’t intentionally injure someone like that.
“I know 100% that she would never do that to nobody,” she told the outlet.
The Virginia High School League, which governs athletics for the state’s public high schools, said in a statement that it is investigating and taking what happened seriously.
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“We thoroughly review every instance like this that involves player safety with the participating schools. The VHSL membership has always made it a priority to provide student-athletes with a safe environment for competition,” the VHSL’s director of communications, Mike McCall, said in an email to HuffPost Monday.