A high stakes hearing next month will determine if St. Louis teen Maurnice DeClue, 15, will be tried as an adult for assaulting Kaylee Gain, 16, whose vicious beating a few blocks from the girls’s school, caught on tape, sparked a national uproar. Senator Hawley and Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey, have been calling for Maurnice to face adult charges.

Meanwhile, Kaylee continues to make a slow and difficult recovery after Maurnice beat her head into the concrete multiple times during their March 8 fight, leaving her convulsing. She is talking and has been able to walk with assistance, according to her father, but she appears to have brain damage that has significantly impaired her memory and speech. 

This comes as Kaylee’s and Maurnice’s families continue to trade barbs about who was bullying whom prior to the fight, and how much punishment Maurnice deserves. Mr. Bailey, the attorney general, is pursuing an aggressive investigation of how, he says, the school’s “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” policies fomented conditions that led to the fight. Lawyers for the school, Hazelwood East High School, which is 97 percent black, have accused Mr. Bailey, a white Republican facing a primary challenge from the right, of racial animus.

The viral video of the fight shows Kaylee and Maurnice brawling a few blocks from school. The video shows Maurnice, who is Black, grab hold of Kaylee, who is white, and hurl her head against the pavement multiple times before Kaylee was left lying on the ground, convulsing. 

Kaylee was in “critical condition” when she arrived at a nearby hospital, according to a GoFundMe page set up for her family, which has raised more than $410,000, including $10,000 from New York hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman. Kaylee’s injuries included a fractured skull and brain bleeding.

An April 1 statement shared by the family’s attorney, Bryan Kaemmerer, explained that she was displaying “significant cognitive impairment,” and the latest news from the family suggests she still has a long way to go.

“It’s been really hard. It’s very slow,” Kaylee’s father, Clinton Gain, told the New York Post. “Some days are better than others.

“Some days she will laugh a little bit, other days she’ll be quiet.”

Mr. Gain says most of Kaylee’s days are filled with speech and movement therapy sessions. He added that Kaylee “doesn’t remember the fight or a few days before it” and “she speaks, but it doesn’t always make sense… she sort of talks in a loop.” She also cannot yet walk without assistance.

Thankfully, however, Kaylee is able to recognize her father.

“She says ‘hi dad’,” when she sees me,” he said. “She knows it’s me.”

Mr. Gain told the New York Post that Kaylee had a rough upbringing due to her parents, who are divorced, both suffering from addiction. She’d only recently moved back in with her mother, who had gotten sober, and immediately began having problems with her classmates, according to Mr. Gain, who says he’s now been sober for several years.

“We don’t know who started things, if it was her or other people,” he said of the mounting problems at Hazelwood East. “But there were problems.”

Kaylee’s family has said Maurnice should be tried as an adult “given the particularly violent nature of this assault” and “the devastating injuries that Kaylee has incurred.”

“The family is encouraged, however, by public statements by those associated with the accused stating that the accused would like to apologize to Kayle for what occurred,”Mr. Kaemmerer said in the statement. “While these statements do not change the family’s position that it is appropriate for the accused to be tried as an adult, it is encouraging that the accused appears to be remorseful for what transpired during these unfortunate events.”

The two families have, more or less, been going head to head ever since Maurnice’s name was revealed to the public. In order “to address misconceptions surrounding Maurnice’s character,” Maurnice’s family released their own statement sharing she was an honor-roll student who played violin in the school orchestra, was a member of the volleyball team and knew four languages.

Kaylee’s parents “[took] issue” with those comments and cited screenshots of social media posts from since deleted accounts that appeared to show Maurnice boasting, after the fight, that she thought she belonged in the WWE.  Maurnice’s family, however, claims the social media postings are obviously false since they were published after Maurnice was in custody of Family Court.

In an earlier interview, Maurnice’s  mother insisted that “Maurnice was not the aggressor.” She also said Maurnice “blacked out during the fight” and suggested her daughter was a victim of bullying.

“She’s not a troublemaker, she’s not a bully,” Consuella DeClue said of her daughter.  “This had manifested over a three-month period. My daughter was focused on her education, and I don’t know… maybe they thought she was a nerd.

“I didn’t know she was being bullied… I would have pulled her out of school.”

Kaylee’s family, on the other hand, has strongly denied the bullying narrative. In his recent interview, Mr. Gain and Kaylee’s step-mother say both parties were equally hostile leading up to the fight. 

The New York Post says “several sources” told the outlet Kaylee and Maurnice were part of rival friend groups at Hazelwood East. Ultimately, a fight broke out between Kaylee and Maurnice’s friend at school which led to Kaylee’s suspension just one day before the March 8 fight with Maurnice. 

After looking through their daughter’s phone, Kaylee’s father and stepmother reportedly found threatening exchanges over text between Kaylee and Maurnice. That’s when the two made the “terrible decision” to resolve their differences with violence. 

“They both agreed to the fight, to meet up and settle what was going on,” Mr. Gain said.

When all is said and done with Maurnice’s trial, Kaylee’s step-mother, Jamie Gain, wants the court to acknowledge that Maurnice’s violence towards her daughter was “way overboard.”

“We hope the justice system sees that [Maurnice] went way overboard and nearly killed her,” Ms. Gain said of Maurnice bashing Kaylee’s head into the pavement. “And that it doesn’t matter who said what to who before it all happened.”

Maurnice is currently being held in juvenile custody as she awaits next steps. A judge’s recent ruling determined that a May certification hearing will decide whether she will be tried as a juvenile or an adult.

“Our position is that she should not be certified,” Maurnice’s defense attorney, Greg Smith, said in a statement. “We understand that the law says that there has to be a certification hearing based on what she has been charged with. That’s non-negotiable but our position is she should not be certified. Everything is out there, about her being an honor student, she has taken AP courses, she has no history with the juvenile court. She has been the victim of bullying. There are other facts that we are going to save for court.”

A change.org petition with more than 1,580 signatures as of this article’s publication is “[urging] Chief Juvenile Officer Rick Gaines of the 21st Circuit Court not to charge Maurnice as an adult.” 

“Please sign this petition if you believe in justice for Maurnice Declue; if you believe that one mistake made while under duress should not overshadow years of hard work; if you believe our justice system should consider all factors before making life-altering decisions about our youth,” the petition reads.

The petition also says the fight “is being used to define [Maurnice’s] character and incite racial divisions and political strife with the [Missouri Attorney General] calling on the courts to charge her as an adult.” 

Mr. Bailey has outwardly stated he believed the school’s “radical” DEI policies are to blame for the violent incident and supports the idea that Maurnice should be tried as an adult. Mr. Bailey claims that local police officers who were supposed to provide security at the school pulled out after they were asked to undergo diversity training. Mr. Bailey, undeterred by the fact that the fight occurred a quarter-mile from school grounds, has demanded that the Hazelwood School District hand over to his investigators information about their DEI programs by April 15th. 

After calling out his “obvious racial bias against majority minority school districts,” an attorney representing the high school, Cindy Reeds Ormsby, said the district would do all they could to provide the records Mr. Bailey requested for his investigation.