A 16-year-old DE high school student died Thursday morning after being assaulted in a school bathroom, authorities said.
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Amy Inita Joyner-Francis had previously tried to break up a fight at school, where she reportedly died in a row over a boy.
Students who knew about the fight said they believed it stemmed from a dispute over a boy. Police said that they are awaiting the results of an autopsy before they can determine the exact cause of death. Stryminski, however, points to adults who he said need to provide more positive examples for kids who have hard home lives.
The victim was identified as Amy Joyner, a 10th-grader from the Howard High School of Technology. “I am just trying to find my grandson”, parent Denise Dinkins told ABC 6 right after the fight took place.
When he and another student were getting ready to fight she stepped in, backed him into a corner and calmed him down. “She went in there to talk things out”, he told Delaware Online. No charges have been announced, though several witnesses are cooperating with police. A vocational-technical high school, Howard is the oldest of four high schools within the New Castle County Vocational-Technical School District.
Medics who attended the scene performed CPR on the victim, who was taken on a stretcher to a waiting police helicopter. A city official said a student died after a confrontation at the high school.
“She never would beef with no other girls or none of that”, Capone Whyte, who went to school with Joyner-Francis, told WXIA-TV.
Wilmington City Councilwoman Sherry Dorsey Walker said she has known the victim and her family for quite some time and had been asked by the family to speak on their behalf.
“That’s really sad”, 18-year-old Howard High School student Kishawna Lloyd said Friday morning.
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“This morning we learned that the unimaginable happened to another young person in our state”. Mayor Dennis Williams issued an official statement at a news conference conducted shortly after the news of her death was confirmed. “Things like this shouldn’t happen”, Williams said. “All I know is that my daughter’s gone, and she was the love of my life, and it hurts”. “We express our prayers and deepest sympathy to her family, who need your support and sensitivity at this time”.
