‘A Lunatic and a Danger To Our Children’: Black Parents Call for Arrest of White Parent Who Allegedly Attacked and Kneeled On Neck of a 13-Year-Old Boy Outside a Los Angeles Middle School

 The parents of a 13-year-old Black student at Ernest Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth, California, are calling for the arrest of a white male parent who they say physically attacked their son outside the school while hurling racial slurs at him, causing serious injuries.

The family of Sal’Vyion “Sal” Torres, their attorney, and community activists held a press conference on Monday in front of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Devonshire police station to call out the school district and local police for their inaction.

“This is very disheartening for me,” said Adrina Torres, Sal’s mother. “My son was attacked by an adult in my community and as of now he has not been arrested.” She said her son “does not feel safe. We don’t understand why LAPD is not helping us at all. We want justice for my son.”

Torres and other parents said that on the afternoon of Dec. 6 Sal and two Hispanic friends walked out of the school to help a friend’s grandmother put some things in her car. While walking back to the school to rejoin the after-school program, they encountered John Morreale, the white father of an eighth grade classmate, standing next to his car near an entry gate.

Morreale began taunting the boys, saying, “What are you, a bunch of p-ssies?” according to Eliza Franklin, the mother of Sal’s friend Gregory King. The boys were puzzled by his comment, she said, and then Morreale, unprompted, approached Sal, grabbed him by the collar of his hoodie, threw him on the car and “began to pummel him.” Then Morreale slammed Sal’Vyion on the pavement and put his knee with all his body weight on the boy’s shoulder, neck and spine, restricting his ability to breathe, while repeatedly calling him “ni—er.”

As Sal was saying “I can’t breathe,” and his friends were calling for help, said Franklin, Morreale finally let up when an after-school program staff member appeared. Then he left the scene.

Salvador Torres, the boy’s father, told the San Fernando Sun that when he arrived at the school, his son was hysterical and crying out, “He wanted to kill me like George Floyd.”

Sal suffered a concussion, a head contusion, a neck sprain, and a knee injury, and was on crutches for a couple weeks following the incident, according to his mother.  Because he’s still limping, he has been missing out on basketball practices and games. He is also emotionally distressed, and has been waking up in the middle of the night, feeling anxious.

'A Lunatic and a Danger To Our Children’: Black Parents Call for Arrest of White Parent Who Allegedly Attacked and Kneeled On Neck of a 13-Year-Old Boy Outside a Los Angeles Middle School