On Friday, a student at Hamden High School in Connecticut was arrested after punching a male senior in the eye, injuring him. The senior said he didn’t know the person who had hit him, but the high school figured out who the suspect was because the suspect was reportedly bragging to his friends.
“It’s a game he and his friends play,” according to the resource officer. The 15-year-old found himself in custody for third-degree assault. The mother of the student, Susan Mappa, said, “Disgusting, I don’t see the fun in it, or the point of it…You wanna play the game, then you’re going to pay for it.”
A spate of reports about the so-called “knockout game” has spread across the country, with incidents reported from Philadelphia to San Diego to Atlantic City to Birmingham to Chicago to New York to Cleveland to Nashville to Atlanta. Nonetheless, the media are downplaying such stories, with NPR, Slate, The Daily Beast, and the New York Times all attempting to write off the “knockout game” as a non-trend.