The parents of a 13-year-old Black student at Ernest Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth, California, are calling for the arrest of a white male parent who they say physically attacked their son outside the school while hurling racial slurs at him, causing serious injuries.
The family of Sal’Vyion “Sal” Torres, their attorney, and community activists held a press conference on Monday in front of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Devonshire police station to call out the school district and local police for their inaction.
“This is very disheartening for me,” said Drina Torres, Sal’s mother. “My son was attacked by an adult in my community and as of now he has not been arrested.” She said her son “does not feel safe. We don’t understand why LAPD is not helping us at all. We want justice for my son.”
Torres and other parents said that on the afternoon of Dec. 6 Sal and two Hispanic friends walked out of the school to help a friend’s grandmother put some things in her car. While walking back to the school to rejoin the after-school program, they encountered John Morreale, the white father of an eighth grade classmate, standing next to his car near an entry gate.
Morreale began taunting the boys, saying, “What are you, a bunch of p-ssies?” according to Eliza Franklin, the mother of Sal’s friend Gregory King. The boys were puzzled by his comment, she said, and then Morreale, unprompted, approached Sal, grabbed him by the collar of his hoodie, threw him on the car and “began to pummel him.” Then Morreale slammed Sal’Vyion on the pavement and put his knee with all his body weight on the boy’s shoulder, neck and spine, restricting his ability to breathe, while repeatedly calling him “ni—er.”
As Sal was saying “I can’t breathe,” and his friends were calling for help, said Franklin, Morreale finally let up when an after-school program staff member appeared. Then he left the scene.
Salvador Torres, the boy’s father, told the San Fernando Sun that when he arrived at the school, his son was hysterical and crying out, “He wanted to kill me like George Floyd.”
Sal suffered a concussion, a head contusion, a neck sprain, and a knee injury, and was on crutches for a couple weeks following the incident, according to his mother. Because he’s still limping, he has been missing out on basketball practices and games. He is also emotionally distressed, and has been waking up in the middle of the night, feeling anxious.
His parents say are frustrated with the school’s tepid response to the incident, which has involved issuing safety plans to Sal and his friend Gregory. Franklin said Gregory’s plan advises him to avoid confrontations with Morreale and his son, and to not leave the school unaccompanied.
Sal’s safety plan will be set up with a school counselor when the students return to school in January, said Drina Torres, adding that she finds the plan “just the school’s way to cover their behinds while they do nothing to address the real problem.”
A school social worker told Franklin that the Morreale family refused to sign such a safety plan.
“We want this man banned from the school grounds, for starters,” Franklin told Atlanta Black Star. She recounted an episode three weeks earlier in which Morreale had inexplicably verbally berated her son, calling him a “ni—er” as he was leaving the after-school program.
She said his “rageful” barrage seemed to follow an interaction between Morreale’s son and her son Gregory, who was standing with a few friends and held out his hand for a fist bump as the boy was passing by. When the boy chose to fist bump a white-appearing Asian American student instead, Gregory casually said, “Alright.”
Morreale then “walked up aggressively, got in my son’s face, and said, ‘What the f—k do you mean?’ and then proceeded to scream at him, calling him the n-word and telling him, ‘You need to go get your dad, if you even know where he is,’” said Franklin.
In the ensuing weeks, the boy told school staff that he was afraid of Sal and Gregory, prompting school counselors to demand that they come to the office and apologize to the boy and promise not to harm him, which they did, despite the fact that the boy’s father had been the aggressor in the situation, said Franklin.
“This man is a lunatic and a danger to our children, and the school is doing nothing about it while criminalizing the Black children in the school,” she said.
Drina Torres said she filed a report with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) police after Morreale attacked her son, and was told that it would be followed up by action from the LAPD. But since then, the family has struggled to connect with either police department, and remain frustrated that Morreale seems to have faced no consequences.
Bradley Gage, the family’s attorney, said the family is seeking “justice, fairness and equality” and that Morreale should be charged with assault on a child and a hate crime. At minimum, he said, police should thoroughly investigate the case and the DA’s office should consider charging him.
“Everyone deserves an education,” said Gage. “No one should be afraid to be at school. No one should be persecuted because of the color of their skin. Schools, once they know of a problem, have an obligation to protect these kids.”
“This is not an isolated incident of racism,” said Najee Ali, a community activist. “It’s a pattern of racism that’s going on in the [San Fernando] valley. The school has failed him. The LAPD has failed him. Without question, had a Black parent assaulted and attacked a white child, that Black parent would have been arrested immediately. He’d be in jail right now.”
“This is a sad situation for all of us here,” said Sal Torres, the boy’s father. “We just want to expose this person. It’s not going to be good for our community. Something has to happen, either by the school or the police.”
An officer with LAPD told Atlanta Black Star that Los Angeles school police were handling the incident.
On Monday, after the press conference, an LAUSD spokesperson released a statement from its regional director Mary Melvin, which said:
The health and safety of our students and our staff remain our top priority.
I want to inform you of an after-school altercation that occurred between an adult (non-employee) and a student off-campus on December 6, 2024, near Lawrence Middle School. We notified the parents of the student involved immediately following the incident. The Los Angeles School Police Department responded to the incident and the investigation is ongoing. We are investigating the incident further in accordance with Los Angeles Unified policy and have taken appropriate actions related to the parties involved.
Our school office will open on Monday, January 6, 2025. We will provide counselors to any student who may need support or someone to talk to. Please reach out to us if your child needs assistance. This incident provides an opportunity to speak with your child about making positive choices and to remind them to tell a trusted adult if they are experiencing issues with other students. We also encourage everyone to follow the District’s message: if you see something, say something.
Los Angeles Unified strives to treat everyone with respect, kindness, and compassion at every school. The Lawrence Middle School community will provide opportunities for any student impacted by the incident to discuss their perspective on how to mediate conflicts that arise, both on campus and within the community.
The Torres family has also reported Sal’Vyion’s assault as a hate crime to the LA County Human Relations Commission, a county agency which investigates and advocates for victims of hate crimes. Members of the commission attended the press conference and its executive director Robin Toma issued a statement extending its “sympathies and offer of support for all victims of hate in this recent incident.”
Ali said he is working with Gage to draft a letter requesting that the U.S. Department of Justice “launch a civil rights probe into the pattern and practice of Black children being racially attacked throughout LAUSD school system. We want a consent decree applied to the LAUSD school system, because there’s a pattern of practice of systematic racism and abuse ranging from not just students, but it includes staff, and it also ignores Black parents’ and students’ cries for help and equal justice.”
