Kaylee Gain, 16, who received worldwide sympathy after viral footage showed her being brutally beaten and having her head smashed into the pavement by a fellow student, threw the first punch, a juvenile officer testified in St. Louis Family Court on Friday. The officer spoke at a hearing addressing whether 15 year-old Maurnice DeClue, the girl who fought with Kaylee, should be tried as an adult.

During the emotional hearing, the unnamed juvenile officer recommended Maurnice be treated as a juvenile by the courts.

Maurnice, an honor student who skipped seventh grade, was arrested on felony assault charges for the vicious brawl, which occurred on March 8 near the students’ Hazelwood East High School. Since the fight, Maurnice has been in the custody of St. Louis Family Court. 

Kaylee wound up in a coma with extensive injuries after getting her head smashed repeatedly into the pavement by Maurnice, who left her on the sidewalk convulsing. She was so gravely injured she has, so far, only partially regained the ability to speak, must relearn basic skills, and has to wear a helmet at all times after part of her skull was temporarily removed to relieve brain swelling.

Since the violent incident, after which GoFundMes for Kaylee passed $470,000 in donations, including $10,000 from New York hedge fund titan Bill Ackman, prominent voices called for Maurnice to be tried as an adult, including Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, and Missouri’s senior U.S. senator, Josh Hawley, also a Republican. 

The case also became racially charged, in part because Kaylee is white and Maurnice is Black. The school the girls attend, Hazelwood East High School, is more than 97 percent Black. After the fight, Mr. Bailey, the attorney general, launched an official investigation of the school, blaming its “radical DEI policies” for the fight. Mr. Bailey claimed that police officers who were supposed to provide security at the school pulled out after they were ordered to undergo racial sensitivity training. The school district has fired back, accusing Mr. Bailey of race-baiting and singling out minority-majority schools.

As juvenile investigators in St. Louis looked into the case, it came to light that Kaylee has a history of fighting and had actually been suspended from school the day before the fight with Maurnice for a fight on campus against a different girl. Maurnice’s mother, Consuella DeClue, on the other hand, insisted in Friday’s court hearing that her daughter “was just defending herself.” 

The juvenile officer testified that she studied the police report and Maurnice’s school records, and met multiple times with Maurnice and her family. “We look for repetitive types of offenses and this is not part of a repetitive pattern,” the officer told the court.  

She said Maurnice has achieved the highest category for good behavior while in custody, has had “no negative behavior incidents, she’s been respectful and consistently follows rules.”

Maurnice was adopted by her parents in 2008 and spent her entire life in the same home, her mother said. She was a well-behaved, “dynamic” learner who skipped seventh grade. Maurnice’s Spanish teacher from Hazelwood East said in court Friday that Maurnice often coaxed less-motivated students to participate in class.

Kaylee’s family had initially called for Maurnice to be charged as an adult, “but they stopped short of that on Friday,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stated in a news report the same day. 

“My family, my church, we all prayed for KG [Kaylee Gain],” Ms. DeClue said on Friday. “I think [my daughter] was just defending herself, I don’t think she had any intent or thought this would happen.”

Multiple witnesses stepped forward on Maurnice’s behalf, including a couple of her school teachers, stating that she has never had behavior problems.

“We are very sorry,” Consuella added.

Kaylee’s father, Clinton Gain, recently confirmed that his daughter had been suspended for another fight with a different person that occurred the day before the fight with Maurnice, and that the March 8 brawl was a planned encounter, via text messages.

In an interview with the New York Post last month, Mr. Gain showed what he said was proof of the girls’ meet-up on a cell phone. Painting a further picture of the troubled teen, he also disclosed that his daughter had been affected by a drug-addicted household in her formative years.

When he and his ex, April Nordstrom, split up, their daughter and her little brother had to live with her grandparents for a couple of years. Kaylee was just eight years old. 

Mr. Gain, who said he has since rehabbed his life and remarried, shared that Kaylee’s behavioral problems started when she went to live with her mother and moved to Hazelwood East. Then the altercations started at school.

“We don’t know who started things, if it was her or other people. But there were problems,” Mr. Gain’s wife, Jamie, told the Post.

In court on Friday, Jamie struck a conciliatory note, saying that  “a terrible choice made by two girls to solve their problems with violence caused one to go too far with her bare hands and a concrete road.”

She also described the extent of Kaylee’s injuries to the court. Although she has “improved considerably” in two months and has finally been able to walk again, she is still suffering from memory loss and has had to relearn how to speak.

Per DailyMail.com, Kaylee’s lawyer, Bryan Kaemmerer, wrote in a statement: “While hospitalized, Kaylee underwent a craniectomy which is a neurosurgical procedure that involved removing a portion of Kaylee’s skull in order to relieve the pressure on her brain.”

Still missing part of her skull, she will need further surgeries to have it reattached, said Ms. Gain, Kaylee’s stepmother, who also noted that Kaylee will be living with her and Kaylee’s father when she is able, and will no longer be residing at her mother’s home.

After hearing the juvenile officer’s suggestion to keep Maurnice in custody, County Prosecutor Wesley Bell said he is leaving it up to the judge, with the decision to come next week.

Maurnice’s family had sought for her to be released from custody and instead remain on house arrest, tethered to an electronic monitor. But Judge Jason Dodson, after listening to both sides share further information on the horrific incident and its aftermath, in which both sides acknowledged that Kaylee did indeed start the fight, agreed that Maurnice should remain in juvenile custody for now, citing one of the reasons being for her own safety, as the DeClues have been receiving threats.

“This is a child — let’s not forget that,” Maurnice’s lawyer Greg Smith said, as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “That’s why we have juvenile court.”

But even as the Gain and DeClue families have moved towards conciliation, the ugliness at the state level has continued. The Hazelwood School District has filed a formal ethics complaint with the state’s Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel against Mr. Bailey, the attorney general, over his investigation into how “diversity, equity and inclusion” practices contributed to the beating. Cindy Ormsby, an attorney for the school district, called his investigation “frivolous” and inaccurate and claimed there is no evidence that race played a role in the beating.

“Employees answering phones are called the ‘n’ word or ‘n-lover,’” Ms. Ormsby wrote in the complaint. “Bomb threats have been made to individual employees and at schools, to which law enforcement have had to respond.”