Masterman beating defendant allegedly had prior-assault role

A Benjamin Franklin High School student, arrested last week in an unprovoked beating of a Masterman High School student working on an antiviolence video, allegedly was involved in an attack a month earlier on a charter-school student for which he was not disciplined.

The top official at the charter school believes that had he been disciplined in January, the arrested youth, Malique Sherril, might have thought twice about allegedly attacking the Masterman student, who required stitches at Hahnemann University Hospital to close a head wound.

In addition, Franklin High Principal Christopher Johnson did not report the Jan. 22 incident to the school district until after he was interviewed Feb. 27 for this article. Failing to report incidents of violence violates Philadelphia School District and state Department of Education policies.

"It's typical of what occurs in Philadelphia schools," said Veronica Joyner, chief administrative officer of the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, at Broad and Hamilton Streets, in North Philadelphia. "Administrators don't report incidents because they don't want to look bad."

"They continue to groom criminals. When they stop grooming them, that's when we'll stop having them," she said.

The school district is investigating Johnson's inaction, said Cecilia Cummings, a district spokeswoman.

The attack on the charter-school student after school Jan. 22 left him with three stitches under his left eye and a busted lip, Joyner said. Two youths pummeled the victim at Broad and Spring Garden streets, according to the victim and Eli Thomas, the charter school's Spanish teacher, who said he chased the attackers away.

The attack resulted from an encounter in a nearby pizza shop, according to an incident report filed by the charter school. Other youths wearing Franklin school uniforms stood nearby, egging on the attacker, the report says.

The next day, underscoring how seriously they took the incident, Joyner and Thomas went with the victim and his father to Franklin - a block from the scene of the attack - to report the incident. Thomas and the victim identified Sherril, 18, and an underage accomplice from a stack of Franklin student photos.

They met with the dean of students, instead of with the principal, Johnson, who was not in the building. After learning of the incident later that day, Johnson had Sherril and his accomplice write statements about what had happened. Both wrote that the accomplice alone had fought the charter-school student.

Based on that, Johnson determined that Sherril should not be punished. He placed the accomplice in a Saturday-morning detention program.

Johnson made his decision without talking to the victim, Thomas or Joyner - a fact that troubles the charter-school educators.

"I saw both of these boys hitting him," said Thomas. "I saw the tussle, and I saw those two [Franklin] uniforms on one of our boys. That's why I ran over there."

"Something should have been done when we went to Franklin. This could have been prevented," he said of last Monday's Masterman attack.

Johnson stood by his decision against disciplining Sherril. "You can't just kick a kid out of school," he said in an interview last week at the school district's administration building. "That's not how it works. There has to be a series of incidents."

When asked about Sherril's arrest in the Masterman attack, Johnson said: "I have no reaction, because we're still doing an investigation to find out what happened. As always, there's three sides to every story."

Johnson said he was not required to file a report about the January incident because it was not serious enough.

But on Jan. 8, following news reports about several incidents that principals had failed to report promptly, Cassandra Jones, the school district's interim chief academic officer, issued a memo to principals reiterating the requirement to report all assaults and other criminal acts "in and around" schools.

All school-violence incident reports are tallied and forwarded to the state Department of Education for inclusion in a year-end school-violence report.

"The regional superintendent will be asked to look at the investigation, as well as the reporting, of the incident," Cummings, the school-district spokeswoman, said of the January incident.

"We take the reporting of serious incidents very seriously . . . .

"There is no discretion, there is no wiggle room, there is no room for error. Failure to report is a very serious breach, and we are investigating the factors that went into this situation where an incident was not reported."

In the Masterman attack, which took place across the street from the school, at 17th and Spring Garden streets, the 18-year-old victim was among 11 students preparing a video about senseless violence when they were approached by 15 teens.

A school-district spokesman said the Masterman student had done nothing to provoke the attack. He was punched in the face and in the back of his head before falling and striking his head, according to police and school-district officials.

Sherril was charged with simple assault and recklessly endangering another person. Two underage students from Laura Wheeler Waring School also were arrested.