R.I.P. Amy Joyner

The violence in America is never ending. After I heard about the death of 16 year old girl because of a fight over a boy, I was extremely devastated. 16 year old Amy Joyner had an altercation with another student over a boy. The altercation then escalated to a fight on Thursday morning at 8 am in the bathroom of Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware. The one on one fight quickly turned into a jumping when 2 other girls hopped in the fight. As the fight was going on, another student was recording the assault on 16 year old Amy. After Amy had hit her head on the sink and been knocked unconscious the girls continued to beat her, having no regard for her life at the moment.

It's true that fights happen everyday and there is no way to prevent that. Sometimes people fight over meaningless things and sometimes people get jumped. None of this is rare. However, we rarely hear about someone losing their life in due to a fist fight. Although fights are common in our society, there were multiple things that were wrong about the fight at Howard High School. Accidents do happen and Amy hitting her head on the sink could have been one of those accidents but the problem is that they continued to beat her after she had been knocked unconscious. It's one thing to fight somebody if they are able to fight you back but the girls that jumped Amy seemed to have no sympathy for someone who was unable to defend themselves. Another problem with this fight is that no one stopped it. Even after Amy lost consciousness, no one broke it up and the girls recording continued recording the fight. Social Media and websites like WorldStar have had a huge effect on this generation because now every fight is recorded to show to hundreds and thousands of people.

Although the fight, in general, was wrong, the biggest problem is that the girls behind the camera chose to keep recording while defenseless Amy Joyner lay on the floor unconscious being beaten. This tragedy could have been prevented if even just one of these girls would have been more aware or caring. In that moment, no one cared about the lives at stake or the possibilities of what could happen. Amy Joyner would still be alive if this fight wouldn't have gone on so long to the point where someone got terribly injured. The girls' focus on "capturing the moment" and recording the action resulted in the loss of a life. This senseless act of violence is a wake up call and it shows the worst possible outcome of these situations. The next time someone decides to fight, I would hope that after this, the people standing around would break it up before it gets out of hand instead of taking a video or walking a way. Now we know, that simply doing this could actually save someone's life.