The Melissa King assault case was an incident in Cleveland, Ohio when personal animosity between two girls led to an alleged attack by eighteen black and Hispanic youths aged between eight and fifteen on a thirteen-year-old white girl named Melissa King. Of the eighteen children, six were convicted. Although there were allegations that this was part of a customary "Beat up a White Kid" day, both prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed that the incident arose from a vendetta between two girls.
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2003 case
On May 1, 2003, school officials and students at Wilbur Wright Middle School separately notified police that "a large fight" was planned for after school near the intersection of Almira Avenue and West 110th street in Cleveland, Ohio. Initially, it was believed that police arrived as the attack was under way. However, two police cars were there prior to the attack and when school let out, they saw a large group of students walking in the street on West 110th. From their automobiles, the police warned them to walk on the sidewalk.
Some of the students moved to block the police cars as part of the pre-planned attack. With the police kept at a distance, a pack of twelve girls and six boys, ages 9 through 15, began to run towards Melissa King, a 13-year-old white girl who was a student at Wilbur Wright and was walking home with two friends.
On reaching King, one girl grabbed King's hair from behind and yanked her to the ground. Then the black and Hispanic youths, 17 of whom were students at Wilbur Wright, beat, kicked, and choked her. As they pummeled and scratched at King, the attackers called her "honky", "white trash", and "white bitch." One attacker was overheard saying, "I hit her and got my stomp in."
By the time police broke up the attack, King had suffered serious injuries to her head, arms, face, neck, back, and an eye and experienced dizziness and blackouts that her mother claimed required repeated visits to the hospital. When the attackers were asked separately by the police officers why the victim was jumped, each one stated, "It's May Day!" They each went on to explain that May Day "is the day blacks beat on whites" and is known as "beat up a white kid day." Others familiar with the attack said it wasn't personal, but that it was merely in keeping with the May Day tradition where minority children get a "free shot" at white children simply because of their race. However, defense lawyers and prosecutors both agreed that the attack sprang from a personal vendetta between Melissa and one girl. This girl testified that Melissa had overheard her talking to a school counselor after she was sexually abused and attempted suicide, and claimed Melissa had spread gossip about this. Within a few days of the attack, Wilbur Wright school responded by suspending five of the eighteen attackers from school for ten days.
2003 fall-out
When the attack was publicized a day later in The Plain Dealer, more than 100 readers contacted the newspaper to confirm that the May Day ritual had been alive and well for years. Many in their 20s recalled staying home sick from school on May Day in the 1990s or hurrying home to avoid getting hurt. Some teachers did not give homework that day because they knew attendance would be down. Although annual assaults on white children by minorities is rooted in certain public schools on Cleveland's West Side, the event may have multiple origins. For example, one man recalled that when he served in the military, many of his friends reported, participated in, or became victims of this annual ritual.
In June 2003, the juvenile justice unit of the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office filed felonious assault and aggravated riot juvenile charges against the eighteen attackers. Noting that the attack was some sort of May Day ritual with the "focus to beat up a white kid," the juvenile justice unit also charged the attackers with ethnic intimidation—a hate-crimes law. In July, Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Joseph F. Russo entered not guilty pleas and appointed lawyers for the youth, and issued arrest warrants for the four who failed to attend the court hearing.
Judge Russo ended the trial on October 2003 with six convictions. These six individuals admitted aggravated rioting, and two of those admitted to felonious assault. Judge Russo said that testimony from prosecution witnesses including Melissa was too conflicting, inconsistent and sometimes obviously false to prove the culpability of four defendants beyond reasonable doubt. However he concluded that "based on the evidence I've heard, May Day is reality and the evidence was overwhelming that this was an attack based on May Day and that the victim was chosen because she was white." In drawing his conclusion, Judge Russo suggested that white students in Cleveland's integrated public schools have reason to fear assaults by minorities in so-called May Day attacks every May 1.