GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – Parents and students at Grand Junction High School braved very cold temperatures Tuesday morning to send a message that bullying has no place in their community.
The rally, held at 7 a.m. at Grand Junction High School, was in response to a video posted on social media on Monday, which showed a teenager sucker punching another in Sherwood Park in Grand Junction.
In the video, one of the teens is seen aggressively confronting the other. At one point, the victim in the video says he has a hard time making friends because of his life at home. Before he’s able to finish speaking, he is seen getting hit in the face and thrown to the ground.
The teen allegedly being bullied begins to walk off and says he wishes he could kill himself.
The video garnered so much attention online that Mesa County Valley School District 51 officials issued a response.
“The behavior in this video is unacceptable and irresponsible on campus or off in a county that has experienced so much pain and sorrow due to the loss of several young people in the last year and a half,” the statement from school district officials reads.
They added the student that was seeing walking off after the altercation was checked on and was OK. The district then provides information on how to report bullying.
"I think the reaction of this video is showing that people are fed up with bullying and it needs to stop, and it's going to take all of us to stop it," Emily Shockely, a spokesperson for D51, told our ABC-affiliate in Grand Junction, KJCT-8.
District officials also told KJCT-8 that they received more than a dozen reports to Safe2Tell,an anonymous app which allows students and parents to report tips about people in crisis.
KJCT-8 reported this was the largest number of anonymous tips the service received for one incident in Mesa County.
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