District of Columbia

The graphic, minute-long cellphone video clip showed a group of five girls chasing a 64-year-old, disabled man into a Northwest alley. As he tried to climb up a chain fence, the girls pulled him down and stomped his head into the concrete pavement. They pulled his pants down around his ankles, removed his belt and beat him with it.

Then, as Reggie Brown lay on the ground in a pool of blood, the girls became jubilant, laughing and chatting. “He’s leaking,” one of the girls cheered, referring to Brown’s bleeding from his head.

None of the girls had prior arrests, but all three had long-standing truancy issues, having missed long stints of school, according to information released at the hearings. The father of one of the 13-year-old girls had to re-enroll his daughter into school because she had missed so many days. That teen had not been in school at all in 2024, Jones later said.