Principal, Students Say Recent Brutal Brawls Are Isolated Incidents

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BOCA RATON (CBSMiami) – In the past two weeks, the Spanish River High School community has faced some challenges. A fight off campus, a fight on campus and threats on social media of possible violence directed at the school.

On Thursday night, the school's principal and students say these are isolated incidents.

Cellphone cameras captured the violence at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton a week ago.

Hard to believe this fight happened on a high school campus, with tons of students sitting around watching.

A mother of a student who witnessed it did not want to be identified, but she described the one student's injuries.

"The eye socket was broken. His nose was broken. His face was broken," she said.

A week before that incident, there was another video reportedly showing Spanish River High students involved in a brawl off campus.

Then, in apparent reaction to this on campus fight, someone posted threats against the school on social media apparently aimed at homecoming events this weekend.

"Spanish River High School is as safe as it has been and will continue to be," said William Latson, Spanish River's principal.

He said the online threats were investigated.

"We've looked at the threats with school police and we've found that they are unfounded and they're not true," he said.

He also said the students involved in this fight have been disciplined and said it's something that happens at a school this size.

"When you have a campus of 2,400 teenagers, that's not something that's uncommon," said Latson.

However after all the media coverage, Latson did cancel a planned pep rally for Friday. Although other homecoming events will go on as planned.

Students understood the decision even they weren't happy about it.

"I feel like it's the right idea to cancel it. You can't really ignore these threats," said student Brett Weiner. "We don't need a pep rally to have fun."

"We were really looking forward to this day and some idiot took it away from us," said another student.

Latson told CBS4's Carey Codd that there is always additional security for homecoming events, but this year there will be even more security.

He also said the school district police are investigating the fight on campus as well as the social media threats that were made.

The principal says he hopes students can get past this and focus on fun this weekend and on their PSAT next week.