Woman called ‘mom of the year’ after beating a young man out of Baltimore riots

  

A mystery woman seen berating and hitting a black-clad teenager, whoreportedly is her son, has been hailed as “mom of the year” after her intervention on the Baltimore streets was caught on video. As violence flared up across the city Monday, the woman, who hasn’t been identified, was captured telling the teenager, who also hasn’t been identified, to “take that f—— mask off.”

[I was knocked to the ground by Freddie Gray rioters, then helped to my feet]

Fox News contributor Charles Payne drew attention to the video in a tweet on Monday. (Fair warning, basically every video in this article will contain profanity.)

By late Monday, videos of the incident were so widespread that Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts brought it up in an overnight news conference.

“And if you saw in one scene, you had a mother who grabbed their child who had a hood on his head and she started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed,” Batts told reporters. “I wish I had more parents who took charge of their kids tonight. I think these were youth coming out of the high school and they thought it was cute to throw cinder blocks at the police department and address it that way.”

[‘Wire’ creator David Simon: Baltimore violence ‘needs to cease’]

Little is known about the context of this scene. Baltimore’s ABC affiliate, WMAR, caught the encounter on camera, but provided only this as an explanation:

This Baltimore mom saw her son throwing rocks at police on television.

That didn’t sit well with her.

The video shows the mother repeatedly striking her boy, chasing him as he tries to walk away.

The clip emerged alongside widely broadcast images of violence that dotted some sections of Baltimore on Monday afternoon and evening.

As The Washington Post has reported, it doesn’t appear that the violence stemmed from organized protests over the death of Freddie Gray, who died of a severe spinal injury suffered while in police custody. His funeral was held Monday.

[A Freddie Gray primer: Who was he, how did he die, why is there so much anger?]

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said late Monday that the day’s violence was the result of “thugs who always want to incite violence and destroy our city. Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who, in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for.”

Although the video of one unknown woman expressing frustration over the violence may stand out as a positive moment in an increasingly grim situation, there have been others. On Tuesday morning, volunteers took to the streets to help clean up the mess left behind.

Source:  Abby Ohlheiser, washingtonpost.com