Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503200057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newport News Daily Press
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Long
But when the fight ended moments later and students saw their 15-year-old classmate curled up, lying motionless on the floor, the cheering abruptly stopped and was replaced by tears and sobs from a stunned, bewildered audience.
Hampton police are saying little about the incident other than that the victim was in a fight with a 14-year-old student in the cafeteria shortly after 11 a.m. A police spokesman would not identify the dead student, but several classmates said he was Jason Windley.
Windley, an honor student last year, played tenor saxophone in the school band, sources said. The students regarded him as bright and well-liked.
``He was friends with everybody. He's like a leader,'' one classmate said. Most of the students interviewed did not want to be identified.
Police described what happened this way: ``One student, 14, struck a second student, 15, with his hand. While the victim was falling to the floor, he struck his head on a piece of furniture, possibly a chair.''
School officials immediately separated the two, Moore said.
As Hampton paramedics arrived to tend to the unconscious youth, school administrators ordered the other students to their classrooms.
Students who saw the fight gave a more detailed account:
They said Windley was standing in line waiting for food when the other student argued with him over a statement Windley allegedly had made about him.
The younger student struck Windley in the neck. Windley put a headlock on the student and hit him, the witnesses said.
The other student quickly freed himself, and, at some point, Windley struck his head against a shelf or other object along the cafeteria wall.
The witnesses said they heard Windley cry out in a plea to stop. ``Jason said ... `Don't hit me no more. I can't move.'''
The witnesses said the other student ignored the plea and continued hitting Windley. At some point, Windley's head hit a table or chair and he collapsed.
``Everybody was crying after he stopped breathing,'' students said.
A substitute teacher administered CPR and was able to revive him momentarily, but he later stopped breathing again. He died at 11:52 a.m. at Sentara Hampton General Hospital.
Witnesses to the fight said it took three adults to pull the other student off Windley. Moore said police are waiting for the results of an autopsy before deciding whether to place charges against the other youth, who was with his parents Friday night.
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Barbara Watson, whose daughter attends the school, learned about the fight when the girl arrived home about 2 p.m. ``She was crying and pretty upset. It took me awhile to calm her down,'' Watson said.
When she asked her daughter what had happened, Watson said, ``She told me there was a fight at school and a boy got beaten up pretty bad.''
``The halls were like completely quiet and everyone was crying. The teachers wouldn't say anything, except that everything is under control,'' said Jennifer Manseau, 13, an eighth-grader.
She said her teacher encouraged the students to pray. ``She said, `If you know how to pray, just pray. That's all you can do,''' Manseau said.
Cathy Sechrist wondered why her daughter, a sixth-grader at the school, was so somber and quiet when she came home early. ``She wasn't very talkative. Just the idea that you could be that close to it and have someone die,'' Sechrist said.
She thinks part of the problem is with the schools. ``I don't think they have a tough enough attitude about fights. I don't think they take it seriously enough and they more or less treat it like, boys will be boys. But that attitude exists at all schools, not just Spratley,'' Sechrist said.
Spratley Principal Mildred Sexton could not be reached for an interview Friday night.
Last year, Sexton initiated a program at Spratley known as ``Peer Mediation,'' which encourages students to resolve conflict by talking with each other.
About 1,085 students in grades six, seven and eight attend Spratley Middle School, said Jerry Sandford, spokesman for Hampton schools. He said 350 are eighth-graders and estimated that most were in the cafeteria when the fight broke out.
In order to diffuse a crisis among other students, Sandford said school officials decided to dismiss classes about 1:30 p.m. Although the school system issued a press release about the fight, students were not told classes were dismissed because of it.
``There were other students who were aware that something had happened, and in order to prevent rumors from spreading and misinformation, we felt it was in the best interests of all to let the students out early,'' Sandford said.
Normally, classes are dismissed at 3:15 p.m..
Sandford said the school sent a crisis intervention team to counsel and talk to some of the students before they were dismissed. The counselors also will be available Monday.
School Superintendent William Canady was at an awards luncheon for outstanding students of the month when he received the call about the disturbance, Sandford said. He said Canady left the event immediately.
by CNB