Minnesota mom says 9-year-old daughter was attacked at school for not being Muslim

A Minnesota mom has said that her 9-year-old daughter was attacked at school by a group of girls because her daughter "wasn’t Muslim." 

According to a report from Alpha News, Shawna Larson told the reporters at the outlet the details of the attack that the mom said took place on April 29 at Hidden Valley Elementary in Savage, Minnesota. The mom said that the principal came and told her what had occurred at the school.  

“They came up to my vehicle and informed me that there was an incident at school that day. They wanted to make it very apparent that my daughter didn’t do anything to cause this, and they told me this was a calculated incident and that she had been attacked on the playground by four other students in her grade,” Larson stated. “I ended up learning … this was due to her race and her religion because she wasn’t Muslim. So that was pretty jarring to hear." 

Larson was told by a teacher that the incident was due to her daughter not being Muslim. Larson did not realize the extent of the injuries until her daughter was bruising the day afterward.  

“That’s when we noticed that she had a black eye, and we immediately took a picture of it. When she came home that day, I just kind of looked her over and she had bruises on her arms and a bruise on her back, bruises all over her legs,” Larson told reporters.  

Larson's daughter said to her mom that the girls pulled her by her hair to the ground and then started beating her up.  

“She told me she tried to get up and when she tried to get up and go for help the first time, and I believe it was the first time that they had gotten her on the ground, that she was trying to fight back and they had told her that if she hit them or she touched them, that they would hurt themselves and tell the teacher that she had hurt them," Larson told reporters.  

Larson was also told by the school that the attack on her daughter was caught on camera. "It showed them going up to her and punching her in the face and her hitting back and then she runs off and they run after her and then that’s when all of them go out of camera view and that’s when the initial attack happens is what the principal told me.” 

The Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District sent a statement to Alpha News about the reported beating: “We can’t share any private data about students, including specifics about student behavior or discipline. Student and staff safety is our top priority, and we take any incident that could endanger others very seriously. We’re committed to working with families as we do that, and as always, we follow our established policies and procedures when it comes to student behavior, which are outlined in the board-approved student handbook.” 

The police department has been investigating the incident.