Pregnant mother, 9-year-old son beaten by mob outside elementary school in Chicago

A pregnant Chicago mother and her nine-year-old child were beaten by a gang outside Orville Bright Elementary School on Monday.

33-year-old Carshawnda Hatter and her two children were attacked while walking home from school. A mob of school-aged perpetrators followed the family on the sidewalk and screamed things at them leading up to the attack. They yelled profanities and insulted Hatter and her nine-year-old son and encouraged each other to “smack” her, per the Daily Mail.

The mob cornered Hatter and her son in front of a chain link fence as the boy hugged his mother in an attempt to protect her while the group began beating her down. They beat the pregnant mother as she shielded her son.

Hatter was knocked to the ground, and one attacker kicked her in the face. The attackers separated the two on the ground and beat the nine-year-old as well. At one point, one of the attackers ripped Hatter’s wig off and punched her in the face.

Hatter and her child were taken to Trinity Hospital in critical condition. At the hospital, Hatter filmed a livestream where she showed her son with a red mark on his face and her young daughter, who witnessed the attack. Hatter said the children were okay and that “It's me, I'm the one who had to be in the hospital.”

The mother was also sick at the time and was being treated for sickle cell anemia. She said of the attack, "They were literally waiting (along) the way we walk home, just to jump all of us. So I asked my kids to come to the next side of the street with me, so they wouldn’t get jumped. So we kept walking. They followed us all the way. … And then they fought my son and hit my son first. … Then they dragged me in the grass and pulled my little baby’s hair out." Police say it is currently unclear what led to the attack. 

According to WGN 9, on Tuesday, Hatter and her family met with school administrators and city leaders and were escorted by police into the school. State Senator Willie Preston, who was in the meeting, said the family is traumatized from the attack.

“We have written every single anti-bullying policy in the book,” Preston said. “We’ve legislated that, but if it’s not working, we need to legislate something stronger.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson commented on the attack in a post on X, stating in part, “That type of behavior is unacceptable in our city and we must not normalize that type of senseless violence.”