A video of a girl named “Sharkeisha” brutally beating a classmate, identified as 17-year-old Shamichael Manuel, has gone viral, and Manuel says the online proliferation of the incident is adding insult to injury.
In an interview over the weekend, Manuel said she thought Sharkeisha was her friend before she allegedly punched and kicked her on the ground. She said that she had no clue that she was going to get attacked.
The video was uploaded to Instagram and was shared thousands of times before it was taken down. It has since been uploaded to other websites.
“We were talking in school and everything and she made it seem like there was nothing wrong with her,” Manuel told KHOU in Houston, where the attack took place.
Manuel said she was invited over to an apartment by Sharkeisha and several other girls after school. When Manuel arrive at the apartment, she was allegedly sucker punched by Sharkeisha before onlookers intervened.
“I was just in shock. I was just like ‘Oh my god, like did she really do that?'” she said. “You’re supposed to be my close, close friend.”
Photos of Manuel show that she suffered a black eye and a busted lip.
She believes she was set up by her former friend. “We were talking in school earlier that day. She made it seem like there was nothing wrong with her,” she said, according to Fox.
Her mother, Olevia Henderson, said that the “video’s just going and going. They’re making jokes, and they’re taunting. They’re glorifying the girl Sharkeisha, but they’re taunting my daughter at the same time.”
Henderson said she heard people even talking about it at a local store.
“I was in the grocery store, and the girl was checking out my groceries. The baggers were just laughing and talking about it. I said that’s my daughter in that video, and their whole expression changed,” she said.
Since the video went viral, Sharkeisha’s Twitter account has gained a large number followers, with some of them laughing about the video’s content. At one point, the name Sharkeisha trended on Twitter, and it generated more than 500,000 searches on Google in one day last week, according to the Google Trends website.
“I had to follow @LilButtSHAR..... She got a Tyson punch. With a girl like that I don’t need no one else. Lol,” wrote one user, which was retweeted by her.
Many users, however, decried the content of the video, saying that people who glorify it are encouraging bullying.
“The poor girl who was assaulted wasn’t even looking at the coward who assaulted her. Stuff like this, and the so-called knockout game, and the fact that there are people who think that these incidents are funny, or entertaining, are signs that there is something deeply wrong in our society in modern times. It’s as if we are heading back into the dark ages,” wrote one commenter on Twitter aggregator site Twitchy.
A portion of the Instagram video can be viewed here (WARNING):
