FRESNO, Calif. – Elijah threw a water balloon at Maribel as she played in the front yard. From the street, he teased her and called her names. Mad and wet, Maribel told Elijah to leave, then she threw a rock at him, drawing blood just above his left eye.
Most examples of this schoolyard staple – boy hits girl, girl hits back – end without arrests, felony charges or electronic monitoring anklets.
Then there is the case of 11-year-old Maribel Cuevas.
In April police arrested the Fresno girl on suspicion of felony assault for hitting Elijah Vang with a rock. She spent five days in Juvenile Hall, then was placed under house arrest and forced to wear a monitoring anklet for 30 days.
She is expected to stand trial in Juvenile Court today. If the allegation is found true, the fourth-grader could spend the next four years incarcerated.
Fresno police said the girl’s actions were anything but child’s play. Officers responding to a 911 call said they retrieved a 2-pound rock thrown by Maribel. It opened a deep gash that required stitches.
“If she had hit the kid on the temple, she could have killed him,” said Fresno Police Sgt. Anthony Martinez. “Then the story would read, ‘Little boy throws water balloon; little girl throws rock and kills him.’”
Fresno’s mayor and police chief stand by the official handling of the incident. But the case of Maribel Cuevas has generated baffled, angry reactions from as far away as France, as observers question whether adult penalties are being levied on what amounts to childish behavior gone awry.
Elijah’s teacher told a defense investigator that the 8-year-old was a good student who sometimes had difficulty controlling his anger, erupting at fellow students with rants in the Hmong language.
The two were in different classes and grades, but on April 29, their paths met.
Maribel was at a friend’s house, playing in a gated yard with her 6-year-old brother and three younger friends. According to Maribel, Elijah and six other boys rode up on bikes and began taunting her, as Elijah had done in the past. Elijah pelted the girl with water balloons, hitting her in the head. The group also threw rocks, Maribel said.
Maribel intended only to scare the boys away, Beshwate said, when she threw the rock from 25 to 30 feet away.
“I think she was as shocked as anybody that it actually hit the boy,” he said. “How could anybody have intended the outcome?”
Police describe the stone as a “jagged-edged piece of river rock” 51/2 inches long and 33/4 inches wide. Beshwate said police recovered the wrong rock and that the real one is smaller.
An adult from the house tended the bleeding boy with a towel as Maribel ran around the corner to alert Elijah’s father and to apologize, Beshwate said. No one was home, and Maribel returned to find police waiting for her.
The girl alleged that an officer grabbed her by the back of her shirt, threw her to the ground, put his knee in her back, handcuffed her and put her in the back of the patrol car.
Police offer a different version. Officers maintain that no other boys were involved in the incident. Elijah threw only one water balloon, they said. A report filed after the incident depicted the girl as hysterical and apologetic.
Because of the severity of Elijah’s injury, the size of the rock and the words from Maribel, the officers determined that a felony had been committed, Martinez said.
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