(April 8) - Eight teenagers have been arrested after filming the beating of another teen and threatening to post the video on the Internet, sheriff's officials said.
Victoria Lindsay was attacked on March 30 by six teenage girls when she arrived at a friend's home, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said.
Two girls confronted Lindsay when she walked in, yelling and threatening her, an arrest report showed. Another girl struck her in the head several times and then slammed her head into the bedroom wall, knocking her unconscious.
"That is animalistic behavior. It's pack mentality. They lured her there to beat her," Sheriff Grady Judd said.
When she woke up, she was on the couch in the living room surrounded by the six girls. The teens blocked the door, held Lindsay down and began beating her, the report said. Two teenage boys waited outside the home as lookouts.
Portions of the video were released by the sheriff's office and posted on CBS affiliate WTSP-TV.
All eight were charged last week with battery and false imprisonment, which are third-degree felonies, the report said.
Lindsay was taken to the hospital by ambulance and treated for a concussion, damage to her left eye and left ear, and numerous bruises, the report said.
Lindsay's father said the teens' motivation for the attack was to produce a video that would become popular on YouTube, a video-sharing Web site.
More Stories"I want stiffer punishments for these shock Web sites that entice kids to make these videos so they can be famous on the Internet," Lindsay's father, who declined to give his name, told The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla. "That is the motive, I am sure of it. It's crazy and it's terrible and they're gonna pay."
But the mother of one of the girls said that Lindsay had provoked the other teens by threatening and insulting them on MySpace, a social networking Web site.
After the girls were arrested, Christina Garcia told the newspaper she looked at Lindsay's MySpace page and saw the message: "hahaha all in jail."
"A lot of people think, 'I can say whatever I want on here and nobody's gonna say anything,'" Garcia said. "A fight is a fight, but this was a beatdown. She did not deserve what she got, but I don't know how she's that messed up and able to get on the computer and talk about that."
It's not immediately clear if the video was ever posted on the Internet.
