Kaylee Gain — the 16-year-old girl left severely injured following a viral fight — was involved in another physical altercation at her St. Louis, Missouri, high school the day before the incident earlier this month, a report says.
Details shared with KSDK reveal a separate fight erupted in the Hazelwood School District on March 7. A spokesperson said at least one student was suspended, which an attorney later identified as Gain.
“She was suspended from school for fighting someone else,” attorney Greg Smith told the outlet. “And despite that, found her way back towards the neighborhood around the high school the following day at dismissal time.”
According to the report, Smith is representing the 15-year-old Black girl who was taken into custody and charged with assault in connection to the March 8 fight against Gain. It occurred about a half mile from Hazelwood East High School and was captured on video. Smith told KSDK that the altercation the day before was the precursor to the fight that hospitalized Gain.
Footage shows a crowd watching the juvenile and Gain throwing punches at one another. Things escalated when the girl got Gain on the ground and started punching and slamming her head on the ground.
Responding officers found Gain injured at the scene, and she was transported to a hospital. Her family’s attorney, Bryan Kaemmerer, said that she “suffered a fractured skull that resulted in brain bleeding and swelling.”
Last week, Gain’s family provided an update on the teen’s condition, saying she is in stable condition and out of the intensive care unit. It’s not clear if she’s still unconscious.
Her mother, April, wrote on her family’s GoFundMe page, “She still has an incredibly long journey ahead of her, but she is strong.”
The alleged suspect’s family claimed that the honor roll student was “harassed and bullied” and was only acting in self-defense. Her family’s GoFundMe fundraiser page was removed, while the two fundraisers established for Gain have raised nearly $450,000.
After Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey suggested that she be tried as an adult, a petition was created to call for officials to consider compassion in her case.
“We request that all aspects of her life be considered during indictment and sentencing – her academic achievements, extracurricular involvement, linguistic skills and most importantly her victimhood as a bullied student who was merely defending herself under intense and flight vs fight circumstances,” the petition, which has over 1,000 signatures, stated.
As the New York Post reported, prosecutors are moving to escalate her case and remove it from juvenile court. Smith said that her parents are “scared to death” and want her “to come home.”
St. Louis County police, on Thursday, announced that eight other teenagers, from 14 to 17, were referred to the St. Louis County Family Court for assault charges in connection with the brawl. However, it is unclear if any of them are currently in custody.
