Mother of shopping mall beating victim says teen arrests 'a relief'
'I don't know if these ladies know the gravity of what they've done. They could have killed someone'
The mother of a 17-year-old girl who was left with a broken orbital bone after a beating by two 14-year-old girls inside White Oaks Mall says it's 'a relief' that a pair of suspects have turned themselves into police.
Investigators announced Tuesday that two teenagers have been charged with assault in connection to a January 9th attack at the Ardene store in White Oaks Mall.
"There was a sense of relief to get one piece of this over with and have the girls into custody and before a judge and begin the healing for everyone involved," said Colleen Taylor, the mother of the 17-year-old victim who suffered the broken bone.
Taylor's daughter must now undergo plastic surgery to repair her eye socket, which her mother said was shattered in the beating.
"She has to have a titanium plate put in to replace the bone, which is completely shattered," Taylor said.
Taylor said the altercation that led to her daughter's injury began on January 9 when she and a friend were about to enter Ardene's, a clothing and accessory chain.
"[They] wanted to enter the store and these young ladies were filming on their phones," she said, noting the girls were asked to stop.
The disagreement escalated from there, according to Taylor, who said the girls followed her daughter and her friend and began calling them names and throwing objects at them.
'Do they know the gravity?'
"Ultimately that ended in the fight," she said, noting her daughter was kicked in the face at some point during the altercation.
"When you kick someone in the face that hard it's very easy to break that bone. As I reflect back, I'm just glad that it wasn't about an inch over driving her nose into her brain, I'd be planning a funeral instead of worrying about plastic surgery next week."
"I don't know if these ladies know the gravity of what they've done. They could have killed someone."
The two 14-year-old suspects, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, were scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.
Both suspects face charges of assault causing bodily harm, with an additional charge of assault with a weapon applying to one of the accused.
Taylor said she hopes the girls will be held to task for what happened, noting that if she could speak to the people responsible to her daughter's injury, she would only have one question.
"Why? I don't know any other question I want answered. What was going through your mind? Why were you so enraged in your life that you would do this to another human being?"