“A kindergarten graduation turned violent today” were the first words of this report from WTVG about a May 21 incident at Queen of Apostles School in Toledo, Ohio. At least a dozen people, all chronologically adult, ended up in a brawl after being unable to resolve a dispute over seating for the ceremony. One woman was arrested and charged with “felonious assault” for allegedly grabbing another woman by the hair and banging her head into a chair. The loser of that exchange needed stitches, according to the report.
Thankfully, no children were harmed, and no serious injuries were reported and certainly no deaths. As we’ve discussed before, the name of this category is to be understood sarcastically, not literally. If you wish further elaboration, you can find it at the beginning of prior installments. See, e.g., “Good Reason to Kill #78: Ate the Last Hot Pocket” (May 30, 2023); “Good Reason to Kill #77: Summoned Bigfoot to Kill You First” (July 13, 2022).
Okay, that last one did involve a murder, but that was an exception to the general rule, because Bigfoot.
No one was killed at the kindergarten ceremony, that’s the point. But there was a full-on brawl between various nominally adult family members, with punches thrown, as you can see on WTVG’s site because of course someone recorded it on their phone. When introducing that clip, the anchorperson felt obligated to say that it was “disturbing,” by which I assume he meant “hilarious.”
It doesn’t show how the dispute arose, or how a dispute could have arisen about seating at a kindergarten graduation ceremony. According to a witness, one family “started to grab their own chairs and kind of like make their own space,” apparently in front of others who then couldn’t see well. The video seems to show there is plenty of space in the room to which one could relocate, and that the ceiling is high enough that standing up would also have been an option. Doing that would put one’s eyeballs above the back of a seated person’s head, thus ensuring that photons bouncing off the children could reach those eyeballs and thereby the attached brain for analysis. But it seems no one thought of that.
According to the witness, he was involved in some of the back-and-forth before things turned violent. At some point, he said, a “whole family in the first two rows stood up—five guys, five girls—they all just stand up,” and before he knew it he had been “sucker-punched.” This knocked him to the ground, whereupon “probably four or five other guys were on top of me, trampling me, punching me, kicking me in the head.” The video generally confirms this, but the man doesn’t seem to have been in any real danger. Let’s just say most of the blows look like they could have been delivered by the children, not just witnessed by them.
Nor is a felonious assault immediately apparent from watching the video. Of course, that depends on what “felonious assault” means in Ohio. At common law, and under some statutes, an “assault” is an intentional act that creates a reasonable fear of imminent harm, whether contact is made or not. Making contact is “battery,” and of course these usually go together—except in the case of a sucker punch, which would be battery unpreceded by assault. But never mind that, because Ohio statutes don’t distinguish between assault and battery. They just define different flavors of assault. In rough order of badness, these are: negligent, regular, aggravated, and felonious.
- “Negligent assault” means negligently causing physical harm to another by means of a deadly weapon or “dangerous ordnance.” A third-degree misdemeanor.
- Regular “assault” means knowingly causing or attempting to cause physical harm to another, or recklessly causing it. Generally a first-degree misdemeanor (i.e., the worst kind), but circumstances could make it a fifth-, fourth-, or even third-degree felony.
- “Aggravated assault” is more complicated. This means knowingly causing serious physical harm, or causing or attempting to cause any physical harm by means of a deadly weapon or dangerous ordnance, “while under the influence of sudden passion or in a sudden fit of rage” brought on by “serious provocation occasioned by the victim that is reasonably sufficient to incite the person into using deadly force….” So, the consequences were or could have been more serious than with regular assault, but you were provoked. A fourth- or possibly third-degree felony.
- Take away the “aggravation” part, and you get “felonious assault,” the charge laid upon the most brutal of our kindergarten parents. This is at least a second-degree felony, so, the worst assault of all.
Given those categories, it seems to me that this was over-charged. It was definitely assault, but the harm doesn’t seem to have been all that serious, and having looked at the definition of “deadly weapon” I’m pretty confident a chair doesn’t count. So I don’t see how this was the felonious kind. Let’s put it this way: the section actually has two definitions of “felonious assault.” The one above is section 2903.11(A). Section 2903.11(B) involves having sex with someone without telling them you have AIDS (assuming you do). Smacking someone’s head into a folding chair doesn’t really seem to belong in the same category.
According to the report, the graduation ceremony was canceled and will be rescheduled for a later date. By then the parents may have grown up enough to attend it.
See also, e,g, “Monks Brawl Over Jurisdiction at Tomb of Christ” (Mar. 13, 2009) (which also seemed unnecessary), and a surprising number of other examples here.
