Cops: Mom in Boxing Glove Attacks Girl at School

Florida's Edith Riddle, 34, charged with child abuse after incident outside school's cafeteria
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 25, 2021 12:05 PM CDT
Cops: Mom in Boxing Glove Attacks Girl at School
Edith Riddle.   (Jacksonville Sheriff's Office)

A 34-year-old Florida woman is facing child abuse charges after allegedly fighting a 12-year-old girl at her daughter's middle school while wearing a boxing glove. Edith Riddle—who initially told officials she was unable to remove the boxing glove because it was superglued to her left wrist, per First Coast News—had accompanied her daughter to a conference regarding the eighth-grader's "hostile outbursts" toward another student, meeting with the vice principal at DuPont Middle School in Jacksonville around noon on March 18, WFLA reports. The message officials hoped to convey apparently didn't get across because the pair—accompanied by an adult male also said to have been wearing boxing gloves, as well as a high school student—then headed to a patio outside the cafeteria, where Riddle's daughter got into a physical altercation with the other student, per WJAX.

An arrest report claims Riddle joined in, punching the girl as she lay on the ground. She "threw several punches to the victim's head" and also "stood on the victim's hair," the report reads, per WJAX. The student was found with abrasions on her arms and knees before being taken for a hospital evaluation by her mother, Crystal Wiltsee, who told police she wanted to pursue charges. Riddle, who was arrested Thursday and bonded out of jail on Saturday, faces one count of child abuse with a personal/special weapon. But Wiltsee says that's not enough; she also plans to take legal action. "I put the school to blame just as much as her," she says, noting officials should have "escorted the lady off the property when they showed up to the school in boxing gloves." (More child abuse stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X