US police pursue girl over stone

Must be a fairly dangerous criminal if it takes 3 cars and a helicopter to arrest her. I still think holding her for 5 days without allowing her to see her parents for more than 5 minutes a tiny bit excessive.

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An 11-year-old girl who threw a stone at a group of boys pelting her with water balloons is being prosecuted on serious assault charges in California.
Maribel Cuevas was arrested in April in a police operation which involved three police cars and a helicopter.

She has since spent five days in detention, in which she was granted one 30 minute visit by her parents, and has spent a month under house arrest.

Her lawyer accuses the authorities of criminalising childhood behaviour.

"They're treating her like a violent parole offender," Richard Beshwate said. "It's not a felony, it's an 11-year-old acting like an 11-year-old."

The girl is due back in court at the beginning of next month.

Police say they had to investigate as the boy who was hit by the stone she threw suffered a deep gash to his head and needed hospital treatment.

He has reportedly acknowledged to officers that he started the fight in late April.

'Obligation'

The confrontation happened in a poor district of Fresno, in central California, where Maribel Cuevas lives with her Spanish-speaking family.

The girl, who speaks little English, has admitted throwing a stone at a group of boys she says were pestering her with water balloons as she walked down the street.

An ambulance was called, but arrived flanked by three police patrol vehicles. A helicopter meanwhile hovered overhead.

The 11-year-old was then read her rights twice in English before being detained.

"We responded. We determined a felony assault had taken place and the officers took the actions that were necessary," said Fresno Police Sergeant Anthony Martinez.

Another police officer told ABC News that the girl, when asked what she thought would happen if she threw the stone, replied that it would make him "bleed".

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Geez. So if a kid pelts another with a baseball during a game does it make it assault with a deadly weapon? No wonder kids stay inside and play video games -- they'd get arrested going outside and being kids...

If she used a baseball bat they probably would have called in the SWAT teams. I will say i am glad that she lives in an area that is so crime free they are able to send out three cars and a helicopter to sort out a fight between pre-teens. I hope spokes-person for the police felt like a right **** while trying to justify this one.

Yeah, I think the punishment was a bit extensive.

I wonder what the 911 call sounded like for 3 cop cars and a helicopter to show up.
Someone must have exaggerated the situation.

They should have let them go see Judge Judy, now thats real justice! :D

Good thing she didn't have a big rock...she might have taken out the copter too. ;)

some news sources say that the rock was 2 pounds....

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"They're treating her like a violent parole offender," Richard Beshwate said. "It's not a felony, it's an 11-year-old acting like an 11-year-old."

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I wonder if Dick Beshwate had a son who was being himself water balloning people...but gets hit on the head with a 2 pound rock killing him.....would his stance change?

She ran away, and scratched a cop...thats what she gets. Sad that she's in all this trouble but she brought it on herself...jail would be exessive and counterproductive for her...so I wonder what the punishment would be.

2 lbs!? That's freakin' huge! And would require a fair amount of strength to heft it up and over to toss at another moving individual.

Perhaps the US Olympic committee should take a look at her for a future shotputter... ;)

Cybr1d
I havent seen the other news sources so If you have a link I'd like read a follow up.

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I wonder if Dick Beshwate had a son who was being himself water balloning people...but gets hit on the head with a 2 pound rock killing him.....would his stance change?
She ran away, and scratched a cop...thats what she gets. Sad that she's in all this trouble but she brought it on herself...

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In any case I still have serious problems seeing an eleven year old girl throwing a 2 pound rock any distance unless, as Ms Mittens said, she is a candidate for the 2012 olmypics.
Also there is no way you can justify holding a child for 5 days with out allowing her to see her parents. I dont know of any child who will not run away if they have done something wrong especially if she is frightened. I didnt really notice any mention of killing in the article :confused:

killing? didnt see that either.

let the girl go-it ought to teach those boys a lesson.

their parents should have been teaching them the concept of respect for women of ALL ages.

These boys got beat up by a girl? LOL>>>>>

MsMittens, it's Ironic you mentioned a bat since recently a sentence was handed down when a little league (pre-teen childrens baseball legue) player beat another to death on a field after some heckling. If I hade witnessed that.... I would be on trial.

Source Los Ageles Times.

//EDIT perhaps they are a little paranoid out there in Lala land.

They obviously stood there and watched her pick up the rock, what were they thinking:

a) she's young to be a geologist;
b) maybe she's going to put little google eyes and pipe cleaners on it and make us a paper weight for our desks; or
c) I think she's going to hit us with that because we're being @#%!!*.

Obviously they didn't consider c.

Obviously not, whatthe.

The rock was a 2-pounder. They second-guessed her strength.....seriously.

Well..This is what impressed me more than anything...

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He has reportedly acknowledged to officers that he started the fight in late April.

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the boy said he was responsible for the altercation...

now that's impressive!

Eg ;)

This really should not suprise anyone here. I mean, come on, we are talking about on of the most liberal states in America..."California" This is the same state that started the attack on the boy scouts for not allowing gay scoutmasters, kicked the christmas carroling 5th graders out of the court house based upon separation of church and state, and required children of one county to pass a test on the different Muslim pillars of religion prior to advancing to 9th grade. So California has a history of taking advantage of the innocent in one hand, while helping criminals to prosper on the other hand. Why else would you allow criminals to obtain drivers licenses and free health care, for which the rest of the tax payers have to pick up the bill, but you have to throw an 11 month in jail for 5 days for throwing a well aimed, and probably well deserved, rock at a bunch of bullying boys. The girl would have been better off shooting one of the kids and killing them. That way the courts would have been sympathetic because of the conditions under which she was raised, and the stressful and hostile environment of the moment would have justified her actions.

I think this is a little over the edge... I live in chicago and have seen some pretty bad stuff, even at my school... People getting jumped with baseball bats and stuff... The police hardly look for them because they don't consider it a priority compared to other stuff going on... So for her to live in the area she does, I'm surprised the police gave a damn...

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These boys got beat up by a girl? LOL

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If a 2 pound rock was headed for your face it would do damage, no matter who was throwing it lol...

It is clearly an over-reaction.

In Ontario many schools have a 'zero tolerance policy' under which students are suspended after the first incident of violence, and can be expelled without much more. It makes "expulsions and suspensions mandatory for serious infractions like bringing weapons or illegal drugs to school, and sets out a zero tolerance policy for bad behaviour" [1]. This is fine, but witless and scared administrators take it as writ, like a holy-grail of self-exculpation, and apply it blindly.

They do this partly because of misguided political corectness -- the person is inviolable -- and partly because they are regularly faced with frivilous and malicious lawsuits by parents whose refuse to accept that their kids might not be bound for university, etc.

The effect is that discipline and its judicial application, which is parenting and much of teaching, is collapsed to a single sentence, no argument, no bias. I find it very disturbing. It shows a real misunderstanding of childhood.

The girl clearly must be disciplined, but her parents should be the ones to do it. I would be happy she stood up for herself, but she obviously needs to keep the rocks in her pockets.


[1] http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en_text/consul...chools_3.shtml

When a fight breaks out in my school the first thing they do is call the police for fear that it could be gang related...

One things sums this up.

"It's the US... would you expect anything less? Welcome to a country where stupidity reigns and common sense died years ago."

****ing california.

HT you need to chill out with that "I HATE THE ****IN US" bullshit...its getting old, and annoying.


MURACU, there was nothing on the article about killing, I was hypotheticaly speaking....a 2 pound rock on your face could kill ya :).

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Originally posted here by Cybr1d
HT you need to chill out with that "I HATE THE ****IN US" bullshit...its getting old, and annoying.

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Hey Cybr1d,

There was nothing in that comment about hating the US.... I stated two beliefs that I hear from differen't people every day... That the US is filled with stupid people and that they have no common sense... I'm not the only person that thinks this stuff... It's thought all over the world by many people that are much brighter and much more affluent than I am. If you don't like the way others feel about you, it's your responsibility to do something about that... but I haven't seen a single American making any efforts to change that... except for our Army buddy that was punished for having some common sense.

The fact is that it's true... You're going to tell me that what happened to this little girl would happen in a place with common sense? How about the recent lawsuit because of the fake movie critic that Sony used in it's add... Being forced to pay out $1.5M because of that... Only in the US would you ever win a law suit like that.. It doesn't make sense... no commercial is ever 100% truth filled(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050803/...review_lawsuit). Or the infamous million dollar cup of coffee (I guess 3 million dollar cup would be more approriate in the end). Sure it was 85 degrees... big deal... most of the places I've worked that serve coffee keep it hotter than normal... If you kept it at the standard of 60 degrees, people would stop in the morning, pick up their coffee, put it in the cup holder and when they get to work they'd complain that it was cold... However, I could maybe see this one happening.... How about this law suit though.. (http://forums.adventuregamers.com/ar...php/t-598.html Suing a video game manufacturer because two hicks are idiots and wanted to get themselves out of trouble.... That's the parents fault... not the kids... Again.. only in a country with no common sense could this happen.

How can you claim I'm being biased or anything else when every news story out there lends to the credibility of my statements.

Peace,
HT

You tell em HT.

Cybr1d.
True there was no mention of killing in the article but you did use it as an example and in this case I found it a bit excessive to bring it into the topic. There are a lot of things that can kill you can even choke while eating a pretizle . :)
I went and checked a couple of sites and there is a lot of conflicting reports on what happened. Two important points are: There was apparently between 4 and 7 boys involved at the start. And witnesses say that the rock in question is not even the rock she threw which was thrown at her in the first place by one of the boys. If that was the case then it becomes a case of selfdefense.
The point that i thought worth discussing was the amount of force used to arrest an 11 year old girl.

There was something on the news last week about an 11 year old that was arrested at her school after she had a tantrum fit in front of her school principal. The cops came and cuffed her. Took her away like a regular criminal. I don't get it. When I was her age, the most we would get for something like that was detention. Good old times!

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How can you claim I'm being biased or anything else when every news story out there lends to the credibility

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The fact that you used the words news and credibility in the same sentence only further pushes the credibility of some of my views.

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Originally posted here by OverdueSpy
This really should not suprise anyone here. I mean, come on, we are talking about on of the most liberal states in America..."California" This is the same state that started the attack on the boy scouts for not allowing gay scoutmasters, kicked the christmas carroling 5th graders out of the court house based upon separation of church and state, and required children of one county to pass a test on the different Muslim pillars of religion prior to advancing to 9th grade. So California has a history of taking advantage of the innocent in one hand, while helping criminals to prosper on the other hand. Why else would you allow criminals to obtain drivers licenses and free health care, for which the rest of the tax payers have to pick up the bill, but you have to throw an 11 month in jail for 5 days for throwing a well aimed, and probably well deserved, rock at a bunch of bullying boys. The girl would have been better off shooting one of the kids and killing them. That way the courts would have been sympathetic because of the conditions under which she was raised, and the stressful and hostile environment of the moment would have justified her actions.

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LMAO! omg, I just woke up my roomate I was laughing so hard. I couldn't have said it better. [applause]