Exclusive: Muslim student in Ardrey Kell attack says she was defending another girl
The Muslim student who was assaulted at Ardrey Kell High School by a male classmate said she was trying to defend another girl in her class from his bullying just before he attacked her from behind, and said she did not fight with him.
Her comments in an interview with The Charlotte Observer are in contrast to a statement from a public relations firm representing his family that claimed she “chose violence” and he defended himself.
The girl, 15, recalled the March 7 attack in an interview attended by her family. The Observer agreed not to name her. The Observer also has offered to interview the 15-year-old boy involved; the relations firm representing his family declined; they have said he defended himself when she attacked him and denied allegations that it was a hate crime.
“He had started saying something about a girl at my table being short, and I just thought that was unnecessary,” she said. “I had said, ‘You give respect, you get respect,’ and that really bothered him for some reason. So he left her alone, and he started trying to come after me.”
It wasn’t the first time the boy had targeted her, she said.
“In the past, he called me a bomber, terrorist,” the girl said. “One time he told me I didn’t have hair under my hijab.”
Their Spanish teacher reprimanded the boy about a week before March 7, the girl said. She had been speaking with a friend in class and had her back to him. Her friend told the girl to turn around.
“He’s like, sort of tilting his head down, making his eyebrows weird … and just staring dead at me,” she said.
He stopped after the teacher threatened to give him detention, she said.
Girl describes trouble in math class
On March 7, she went to math class, her first class of the day.
“He had started calling me the b-word over and over,” she said. “He was getting himself more amped up and really just angry for no reason.”
She said he “kept just saying the n-word at me, he kept calling me a b-word” and said she could hear him whispering things to his friends.
She tried to get their teacher’s attention multiple times, but he didn’t respond. She tried to get the boy to repeat what he had been saying louder so the teacher could hear, but he wouldn’t, she said.
She said the teacher turned to help another student with their work.
She said she decided to call her brother and went to get her phone from the phone pouches, where she and other students put their phones at the beginning of class.
With her back turned, she grabbed her phone and put it in her waistband. She was just about to turn around when he threw a punch at the side of her face from behind her, she said.
“I was caught really, really off guard,” she said. “I did not expect it at all.”
After the first punch, she saw the door was open to the hallway and moved toward it to escape. The boy followed, throwing five or six punches at her, she said.
She said she was having trouble keeping track of what was happening around her, feeling dizzy, but could hear the boy yelling more expletives at her.
No one helped her, including the teacher, she said, as she moved from the classroom to the hallway.
“I was at the door, and he was still behind me, and I was holding my head, and then I started walking,” the girl said. “He pushed my head into the locker, and I had a big, big bump on the back of my head, and then he was just really sort of tossing me around, I guess, like, I’m not fully sure, but he was still coming after me.”
She said that she never physically assaulted him or tried to fight back.
Another teacher in a nearby classroom poked her head out and the girl said she grabbed the teacher’s shoulder, saying, “I think I have a concussion.”
She said she went into an administrator’s office. He called the school nurse.
At one point, the student said, her classroom teacher walked into the office and helped hold up her head.
“He’s telling me, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would escalate. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ just over and over,” she said. “It was clear that he knew he could have saved me.”
Ardrey Kell’s school resource officer came in to get a statement from her while the nurse was cleaning her, she said. But with a concussion and difficulty holding up her head, she said she couldn’t do it.
Anti-Muslim bullying was something she said she learned to brush off at Ardrey Kell.
It was common for other students to tell Muslim students, especially those wearing hijabs, to go back to their country or make similar comments, she said.
The girl said a second student at Ardrey Kell bullied her because of her faith.
She is now enrolled in a new school, where her best friend attends.
This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
