Left: the Detroit-area playground where a 12-year-old girl allegedly threw a corrosive substance on 11-year-old Deaira Summers. Right: Summers speaks to Fox affiliate WJBK in Detroit. Inset: NBC affiliate WDIV.
An 11-year-old girl is recovering after allegedly being attacked with acid during a fight on a public playground, and a 12-year-old girl is facing criminal charges.
Deaira Summers says she was left with severe burns after having a corrosive liquid tossed at her as she was trying to flee a fight between her cousin and a third girl at a playground attached to Vernor Elementary School in Detroit, Michigan, on July 9.
Now, that third girl, age 12, has been criminally charged.
“The juvenile respondent has been charged with one count each of Assault with Intent to do Great Bodily Harm and Felonious Assault,” a press release from the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday. The child was released on $10,000 bond with an electronic monitoring “tether” attached to the order.
She was also “ordered to have no contact with the victim or any witnesses,” the statement said.
“This is an extremely troubling set of allegations,” prosecutor Kym Worthy said in the statement. “Instant horrible decision making can have lifelong effects on others. There is no excuse for this.”
According to Deaira, she wasn’t involved in the altercation between her cousin and the girl now charged with assault.
“My cousin and a girl had started fighting and once they stopped she says I got something for you all,” she told Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK.
Deaira had initially fled the park, but realized she had forgotten her purse and ran back to get it. That’s when she was hit with the corrosive liquid.
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“I was screaming, and I was crying,” Deaira told local NBC affiliate WDIV. She said she ran home after the attack and has suffered burns on her back, legs, and arms.
According to Deaira’s mother, the substance actually came from the attacker’s mom.
“Her mother met her in the park and gave her the chemical to throw on the kids and she told the kids that’s what they get for messing with her daughter,” Dominique Summers told the station.
She said that after the attack, smoke was coming off Deaira’s body “from head to toe,” and that the acid left holes in her daughter’s clothes.
Deaira reportedly spent three days in the hospital, where she was diagnosed with second- and third-degree burns down her back, WJBK reported.
Deaira’s family has started a GoFundMe to raise money to cover her medical costs.
The accused girl, whose name has not been released, has a hearing set for Tuesday, the prosecutor’s office said.
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