Alleged text-rage beating accomplice sweetly apologises

A 13-year-old Florida girl charged in connection with the savage beating of her friend said she did not think the boy charged with the assault would follow through on texted threats of violence. “If I knew he was going to do it, then I probably would have done something about it,” Kayla Manson said. “I wouldn’t really hurt somebody, and wouldn’t help someone hurt somebody.” Manson is a central figure in the case that shocked the US on March 24, when 15-year-old Wayne Treacy attacked fellow Deerfield Beach Middle School student Josie Ratley, also 15, while she was waiting for her school bus. The attack followed an exchange of text messages that began with Ratley telling Treacy that he shouldn’t be seeing her friend, Manson.

Treacy told police he snapped when Ratley made a reference to his deceased older brother, who committed suicide last year. After texting Ratley that he was going to kill her, he put on his steel-toed boots and rode his bike three miles to the school. Treacy did not know Ratley and asked Manson to identify her for him. After pointing out her friend, Manson said she got on the bus to go home and did not see what happened next. Treacy threw Ratley to the ground, pounded her head against the concrete sidewalk and kicked her repeatedly with the steel-toed boots. Ratley somehow survived the attack.

Video contains NSFW language.


Manson said when Treacy asked her to point out Ratley, he didn’t say he intended to kill her. “I thought he would probably just curse her out or yell at her, embarrass her,” she said. “I thought he would never touch a girl.” Manson told Vieira she did not see the texts that threatened her friend with death. Vieira asked which texts she did see. “The one where she calls him a rapist, and … he calls her a c---,” she said, casually using the vulgar term. When she repeated the word, Vieira had to tell her, “We just have to be careful with our language.”

Vieira later apologized to viewers, saying, “It’s really not Kayla’s fault. I asked her about the text message, and she … was giving me verbatim what was in it. She didn’t know there are certain words you can’t say on television.” Jonathon Marne, one of Manson’s two attorneys, joined her for the interview and pointed to Manson’s casual use of the word as evidence that kids don’t view language and threats the same way as adults do. “These terms, unfortunately, are part of common vernacular in middle school. These children speak in ways that adults would not find appropriate,” Marne said. “You’ll hear one child threaten another child, ‘Oh, if you do that, I’ll kill you.’ They don’t take these things seriously.”