Video: Delco mom forced daughter to fight, cops say

LIKE A BOXER'S trainer leaning into the ring, Michele Davenport barked orders at her 12-year-old daughter Sunday afternoon in the parking lot of Primos Elementary School.

"Just f------ hit her! . . . Take her down! . . . Punch her in the face! . . . Kick her! . . . Do it! . . . F------ get her down! . . . Go ahead, knock her right across the head!" Davenport screamed as she convinced her daughter to fight another girl. The incident was captured on tape and turned over to Upper Darby Police.

Superintendent Michael Chitwood announced Wednesday that Davenport, 45, of Clifton Heights, has been charged with simple assault, corrupting the morals of a minor and related offenses. Her daughter was charged with simple assault and harassment. The other girl suffered a concussion, Chitwood said.

"The mother is the catalyst for this whole thing," he said. "You got her daughter with a bloody nose; you got the other kid with a concussion, all because the mother acted like a moron.

"That's not the way to handle these types of things. As tough as they are for a parent or grandparent or anybody else to have to deal with these bullying issues, that's not the way to do it."

At one point in the five-minute video, they stop fighting. The victim offers a handshake to Davenport's daughter. But Davenport eggs them on.

"You can see that the kids really don't want to fight, but the mother is so adamant and so profane, that eventually the two 12-year-olds get in a fight," Chitwood said.

The fight follows a January incident in which a 12-year-old boy was critically injured in a schoolyard fight at Darby Township School. The boy, Bailey O'Neill, died of his injuries last week at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Blog: philly.com/DailyDelco