Texas woman, 34, arrested after video of her brutally assaulting teenager in school goes viral

Police arrested a Texas mother on Tuesday (24 October) after a video showing her brutally beating up a teenage girl at a high school in Corpus Christi went viral on social media.

Mary Alice Hernandez, 34, was arrested by the Corpus Christie Independent School District Police in Texas and has been charged with assault for causing bodily injury.

The video (graphic content, viewer discretion advised) was filmed in the courtyard of Miller High School and went viral, receiving over 233,000 views.

The clip was posted on 17 October by the victim's mother, Julie Pinon, on her Facebook account. The 15-second video showed the perpetrator repeatedly striking a student in the head before fleeing from the scene.

In the clip, the teen appears powerless to fight back against the woman, who continues to punch and pummel her. The 34-year-old keeps hitting her despite the girl falling down.

The video ends with the woman running away, leaving the girl on the ground.

On Facebook, the teen's mother wrote that it was her daughter who was beaten up in the footage and that her daughter was attacked after she got into a fight earlier with Hernandez's daughter.

"My daughter didn't want to hit her because she didn't want to disrespect her since she's an older woman," Pinon wrote in the Facebook post along with the video.

Pinon also updated the post later and explained the incidents that led to the fight. She wrote that a male classmate of her daughter's had spread a "disgusting rumour" about her. When Pinon's daughter confronted the person, he asked Hernandez's daughter to beat her up.

Hernandez and her daughter showed up at the school on 16 October, when Pinon's daughter was at volleyball practice, and the two girls reportedly fought.

According to Pinon's Facebook post, her daughter won the fight, but Hernandez "apparently couldn't handle the defeat and decided to attack my daughter".

Pinon also wrote that her daughter did not fight back "because the woman clearly had an entourage that would have, without a doubt, hurt my daughter even worse".

Corpus Christi Independent School District Police Chief Kirby Warnke told the Caller Times that they worked with the city's police department to track down Hernandez.

She was taken into custody on Tuesday at the Nueces County Jail in Texas and is being held on a $25,000 (£19,027) bond, the New York Daily News reported.