St. Louis, Missouri – A White teenager who was brutalized by a Black female on viral video is still alive, despite early claims made by social media commentators. Currently, the victim is listed in critical condition, following a now infamous attack on Friday afternoon near Hazelwood East High School.

Officers from the St. Louis County Police Department were called to the assault, which took place in Spanish Lake, St. Louis, around 2:30 p.m. at Norgate and Claudine Drives, where they discovered a young White victim suffering from serious head trauma.  

The violent ambush was captured on film and posted to social media, where the footage had received over 14 million views at the time of press.

The extremely graphic video opens to show a fight in progress between two girls surrounded by a group of peers. A Black teenager can be seen shoving a smaller White girl to the ground, throwing several punches, and repeatedly slamming the White victim’s head against the concrete.

The injured White girl—who has been identified as Kaylee Gains—appeared to be trembling and convulsing on the ground moments before the clip ends.

For the crime, Police arrested a 15-year-old suspect, later identified as Maurnice Declue. She is currently being held in custody by a family court on charges of assault, where a juvenile judge will decide if she is to be tried as an adult.

Due to the minor status of both the victim and suspect, details regarding the two appear slim. Online commentators on X, formerly Twitter, originally reported that the girl had died as a result of the attack, but a recently created GoFundMe in support of Kaylee shed new light on her long road to recovery.

“With heavy hearts I am asking for support for our beloved Kaylee and family,” read a statement inside the GoFundMe page. “In minutes, this family’s life shattered when their only daughter was assaulted outside of a North County high school.”

“She was left alone on the ground to convulse before EMTs arrived on the scene. She was admitted to one of the local hospitals in Saint Louis with a skull fracture and frontal lobe damage. She has major brain bleeding and swelling and is in critical condition. Kaylee is fighting hard to stay alive and heal but this is only the beginning of a very uphill battle for Kaylee and her family,” the statement continued.

The viral video of young Kaylee’s victimization by a Black attacker sparked a firestorm of outrage on social media, with some on X/Twitter demanding the incident be treated as a hate crime. Some even postulated that if Kaylee were to die as a result of her brain injuries, the charges should be upgraded to murder, and that DeClue’s parents should face prosecution as well.

“(Retweet) If you think the charges should be upgraded to a hate crime and if she dies, Murder,” read one comment with over 26,000 likes on X/Twitter. “The media is downplaying this (because) it doesn’t fit the narrative… get your kids outta Public school folks.”

Joining the sea of public outrage was St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, who called the attack “sickening and so difficult to watch,” but noted that “In Missouri, by law, our office has no jurisdiction. This is a Juvenile court matter unless it is certified…and by law, certification is not our decision either. We pray the victim makes a full recovery. This is just heartbreaking.”

From every report I can find, Kailee is still alive. She remains in critical condition, but she's alive. I sincerely hope she makes it 🙏 #Kailee https://t.co/vb1g9YnQqr

— Haley Worth (@haley_worth) March 11, 2024

Missouri’s Republican Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, took to X/Twitter, to call for the accused to be tried as an adult.

“This evil and complete disregard for human life has no place in Missouri, or anywhere. I am praying for the victim. The criminal should be charged and tried as an adult. If the victim dies, that offense should rise to a homicide,” Bailey wrote in a post.

In a recent interview on local radio Wake Up Mid-Missouri, Bailey called on the state’s juvenile justice system to be reformed following the outrageous clip.

“Well, this is horrific, and we’re seeing this happen more and more across the state where juveniles are committing violent crimes,” the Republican Attorney General said, also referencing the two juveniles charged in a bloody shooting during last month’s Kansas City Chiefs parade, which resulted in one death and nearly two dozen others injured. 

“We’ve got to reform our juvenile system to ensure that these sorts of issues are addressed,” Bailey explained, pointing to the decline in juveniles committed to the state’s Division of Youth Services for treatment as proof that the justice system is failing to prosecute offenders.

Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley addressed the incident, calling the fight “horrific” and concurring with the need for change. He particularly backed tough prosecution of the arrested teen and supported a federal mandate for more school resource officers.

“I hope the prosecutors will get tough here and do the right thing, which is to try the individual as an adult and protect kids at school,” said Hawley. “Sometimes horrific things happen that are accidental. That wasn’t this. This is clearly intentional.”

“I’m in favor of doing for our schools what we do for sporting events. If it’s good enough for some football games to have a security presence, to have cops, to have security cameras, surely, it’s good enough for our kids.”

The Hazelwood School District released a statement over the weekend, calling the attack a “tragedy” caused by “bullying” and offering “emotional support” to those affected. The controversial school district has been mired in diversity-related woes, however. In 2021, the St. Louis Police Department was forced to pull all of its resource officers from Hazelwood schools after the district demanded they undergo a forced 10-hour Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training regimen.

Hazelwood’s dogged commitment to pro-Black social justice policies, however, could be exposing young White students like Kaylee to a near-constant threat of interracial violence. According to the education data aggregator, GreatSchools, the Hazelwood School District is currently 80% Black, with White students making up a meager 13% of the overall student body.

The statistics would prove alarming. According to the White-Papers Policy Institute, American schools have become an unsafe environment for the White community, with Black students 85% more likely to engage in acts of violence on school grounds. Additionally, non-White students have contributed to 72% of all school shootings, forcing schools to increase security protection by up to 65% in the year 2020.

The systemic demographic replacement of the White majority has only worsened the prospect of escaping non-White violence in school. WPPI estimates that 45% of White students in America are enrolled in a school where 75% or more of their student body is White. These increasingly rare majority White public schools appear in the midwest, with private schools—a traditionally safe avenue of escape from diversity—no longer providing a consistent White majority.

While Missouri lawmakers have attributed the vicious assault of young Kaylee to a growing national issue of juvenile violence and a negligent justice system, the evident Black-on-White element remains under-discussed. While questions remain as to what started the brawl, the reality is the racial and political polarization of St. Louis, especially following the 2020 summer riots sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The city of St. Louis was once a dominant hub of French settlers and later German and Irish immigrants, but in the aftermath of the First World War, waves of African-Americans from the South flooded the ‘Gateway to the West’ during the Great Migration. After 1970, the depopulation of the city accelerated, plummeting by nearly 170,000 by the 1980 U.S. Census and a further 100,000 by 2000 as Whites fled the inner suburbs for the western reaches of St. Louis County and beyond—a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘White Flight.’

According to the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau, the White population of St. Louis comprised 44.6% of the overall population, with the Black population tailing at 43.9%. The Spanish Lake area, where the viral attack took place, was once “a rural refuge for middle-class whites from north St. Louis” during the 1950s.

By 1990, the population had decreased to 80% White and 20% Black. By 2010, the area underwent a jaw-dropping reversal at 80% Black and 20% White, with much of the township remaining “empty.” This catastrophic change was explored in a 2014 documentary titled Spanish Lake by Phillip Andrew Morton, a former resident who lamented the decline of his hometown.

According to St. Louis Public Radio, when asked about the racial replacement and current state of Spanish Lake, Morton replied, “It comes down to fear. This whole myth of black people bringing down your property value needs to be lifted from St. Louis. That is not the case. The realtors want you to believe that, and they want to scare you out of your homes. If you don’t move then areas don’t change. When you move and there is a mass abandonment of your area, there will be decline. So, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Just think about that.”

White children have often become the unwitting targets of Black savagery, with American schoolhouses serving as the backdrop for their unhinged crimes. In November, White 17-year-old Jonathan Lewis was beaten to death by up to 15-non White teens in an alleyway near his High School in Las Vegas. Like Kaylee, Lewis’ attack was also caught on film.

Police notoriously dismissed the possibility of hate crimes before they ever made any arrests, sparking outrage and demands that the incident be treated as a modern-day “lynching.”

In May of 2022, White teenager Ethan Liming was brutally beaten to death by three Black men on a basketball court in Akron, Ohio's "I Promise School." The monstrous attack had sparked protests and a chorus of demands for hate crime charges for all three suspects. A Republican-appointed judge, however, would later reduce the charges, upsetting the White community as well as the victim's father, who would later demand justice for his racially-targeted son.

Local police are asking anyone with information regarding the incident to contact the St. Louis County Police Department at 636-529-8210. This story is developing, and the Justice Report will provide updates as they become available.

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