Why East Idaho News posted a video showing a student being attacked at school

The video is difficult to watch.

A young girl is walking down the hallway at Rigby High School when another girl comes up from behind, grabs her by the hair, punches her in the face and pulls her to the ground. The attacker continued to beat the girl for a minute while the victim struggled on the floor.

I say “video” when I should say “videos” because several students pulled out their phones and recorded the attack. Some cheer, one says: “Why doesn’t she defend herself?” and others laugh.

Those videos were posted on social media — likely just seconds after the attack — and on Friday, EastIdahoNews.com began receiving messages, calls, text messages and emails showing the beating in the hallway.

The tips continued throughout the weekend and reporter David Pace began investigating. He reached out to the victim's parents who were willing to tell their story and contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office and the Jefferson School District 251 administration.

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David found videos of other alleged fights at Rigby High School online – including the Instagram account “rhsfights2024” – where eight encounters were uploaded for the world to see. The page has since been removed.

For four days, David worked on the story and spoke extensively with Tyler and Whitney Pincock (the victim's parents), the sheriff's office and the district attorney's office. No one from the school district responded to David's emails, but Superintendent Chad Martin sent a message to parents expressing “deep concern and disgust” over the attacker's behavior, stating: “In our schools or in our community there is no place for it.”

Unfortunately, EastIdahoNews.com has reported on situations like this in the past. Two years ago, a girl at Thunder Ridge High School in Idaho Falls was leaving a classroom when three girls attacked her. Again, other students filmed with their cell phones and posted the footage on social media, one with the caption “Thunder Wild.”

RELATED | Students are being “disciplined” after video of an attack at a local school goes viral online

We've been sent videos of other school fights, and in many cases parents don't want to talk about them publicly because they fear their child could become a bigger target.

Students who have witnessed fights at school have told us they are afraid to get involved because they could get in trouble, be suspended or prosecuted. Many say they film the encounters to collect evidence and aid investigations.

The Rigby story was published on EastIdahoNews.com at 6 p.m. Wednesday and had been read more than 30,000 times by midnight. As of Thursday morning, there were over 1,000 comments on our website and Facebook page – some criticizing us for sharing the video and one person saying we support struggling children. (Really? This is ridiculous).

I'll be honest – we debated for days whether we should include the video in the story. Ultimately we decided this was necessary for several reasons:

• The video had already spread widely on social media.
• The video of the attack shows the gravity of the situation better than we describe it.
• Other parents and students have asked us to share the video to raise awareness about what some children experience when they go to school.
• The victim's parents said they agreed with EastIdahoNews.com releasing the video.

We used one of the videos sent to us and since children are involved, we added a blur filter, hidden names and swear words, and made sure the students were unidentifiable. To be clear, if the victim and his parents had asked us not to include the video in our story, we would not have done so.

EastIdahoNews.com plans to report more on bullying in eastern Idaho schools in the coming months. It is an important topic that should be discussed. If you have a story to share, please email [email protected].

I'm not a senior yet, but as I drove my kids to school this morning, I talked to them about the incident. They didn't want to watch the video, but we discussed what they should do if they see someone being bullied or beaten up and how they can help others.

That's another reason why we posted the video. Hopefully parents can use this very unfortunate situation to talk about bullying and arguments with their own children. Maybe sharing the video will prevent another child from being attacked. We can only hope.