A large group of students identified by Miami Central High School (Fla.) as football players got involved in a fight that apparently started because of a homophobic slur.
Video shows a group hitting a tenth-grader who was on the ground.
James Hundley, the tenth-grade student, told Local10 the fight started between him and one other student after a homophobic slur was used against him.
It appears as though more students joined in and targeted Hundley.
“We started fighting, and all of his friends jumped on me,” Hundley said to the outlet. “They always jumping me and I stopped fighting because it was too many of them.”
He said there have been homophobic incidents in the past, including at Homecoming, when football players threw items at Hundley and his friends while they were dancing.
Hundley is among the students who got suspended in the fight, which took place Jan. 30.
A statement released to Local10 by Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesman John Schuster called the fight a “mutual combatant situation.”
But Hundley’s grandmother, Ada Smith, called it a hate crime.
She’s upset her grandson is suspended.
“How are you at fault (when) someone’s got you down on the ground on your stomach and everybody’s jumping off the tables down on you, walking, with a few kicking you,” Smith said to Local10. “How was that mutual combat?”
