4 Georgina high school students accused of assaulting black student

Four male teens are accused of beating a black student last month as onlookers yelled racist remarks outside a York Region high school where last year some students were seen sporting the controversial Confederate flag.

The fight, which was caught on video and uploaded to Youtube on Monday, shows two teens punching each other in the face outside Sutton District High School in Georgina as an onlooker can be heard saying, “Pound that n***a.”

Another male voice can be heard taunting the white teen by his name and saying, “Get up. Come one. You’re losing to the black kid. You f****n’ h**o.”

The victim’s mother told CityNews it was hard to watch the video.

“Seeing your child’s head kicked is a difficult thing to watch,” Desiree Makuto said.

“Hearing the words in  the background — it was awful.”

Charles Makuto, the father of the 17-year-old victim, said his son suffered a broken hand and the tendons in his finger were also broken in the April 8 incident. The teen has returned to school, according to school and police officials.

York regional police say they have completed their investigation but declined to comment on the video, saying the evidence collected by its hate crime investigators was now before the courts.

The four accused students, two of whom are 14 years old while the other two are 17 and 18, face assault charges and are expected in court next week.

School principal Dawn Laliberté said the alleged assault and slurs were “completely unacceptable and not tolerated” and that the accused youths were suspended from school but have since returned to class.

“This should never have happened. There’s no question. It was unfortunate a small group of students who chose to use some very, very inappropriate words,” she said.

Laliberté has been in contact with the victim’s family and said there are adults and advocates available to the student in the building to “ensure he feels safe.”

She said the school has “to educate and make them more aware of the impact of their statements.”

After two or three kids who wore the Confederate flag on their clothing and their backpacks last year, the school educated them on how it’s a racist symbol and that there have been no such further incidents, she said.

Sutton high school student Daniel told CityNews it was “devastating” to hear about the latest incident.

“I was completely shocked at first to actually hear that. But I know that our school, the community, the students and the administration are doing everything they can to prevent this from ever happening again.”

The victim’s mother said she’s from South Africa and has never heard such racist slurs.

“Wherever I’ve lived everyone has been courteous. Everyone has observed some of the parameters of living in a civilized society. I’m really disappointed by what’s happened,” she said.

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