Coral Gables High Courtyard a Teen Fight Club
YouTube clips show the Coral Gables High School courtyard was used for more than studying
By TODD WRIGHT
Updated 5:31 PM EDT, Wed, Sep 16, 2009
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The Coral Gables High School courtyard is commonly used as an alternative for students who don't want to eat lunch inside a cafeteria.
But several YouTube clips have surfaced since the tragic stabbing murder of a student on Tuesday that reveal that students openly did more than snack during lunch time.
In what mimmicks a movie scene out of "Fight Club," only without the secret location, students tested their skills in hand-to-hand combat in broad daylight as dozens of other students watched and cheered on their favorite combatants.
The fights, which last as long as five minutes, would have been hard for any administrator or teacher to miss and brings into question the amount of security and supervision being provided at the school.
In one clip, two kids wrestle on the ground like MMA fighters while another fight gets underway a few feet away while students with digital cameras and video phones capture the action.
The clips might shed more light into what happened on Tuesday morning, when Juan Carlos Rivera was fatally stabbed three times by another student in the same courtyard where students meet to settle scores with violence.
Concerned parents and students have wondered how something like murder could happen on the school's campus and school officials have labeled it a random act of violence.
School officials said that the school's resource officer was not campus at the time of Tuesday's incident because he was attending a court date. But what about the fights that seemed to happen routinely in the area?
True, many schools have fights, but the YouTube clips appear to show that the Coral Gables High fights were a regular and an accepted practice among the students with little fear of being caught by school officials.
First Published: Sep 16, 2009 1:48 PM EDT
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