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Before Video Beating, Toiletries Led To Spat, Records Show

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By DENNIS JOYCE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 23, 2008

In the hours before the now-notorious video beating, in which a group of girls are seen hitting another girl, there was a spat over a borrowed hairbrush and razor followed by a string of threatening phone text messages, court records show.

The victim in the beating, 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay, told a detective that the girl seen punching her repeatedly in the video, Mercades Nichols, sent the text messages to her while Lindsay was headed back to Polk County from a day at Cocoa Beach.

Lindsay said that before she left, the two had argued over a hairbrush and razor that Lindsay borrowed from Nichols without permission.

The details emerge in court records released this week in the prosecution of Nichols and seven other teens in the March 30 beating.

In other developments Wednesday, Polk County Circuit Judge Keith P. Spoto withdrew a gag order that was issued in the case after defense attorneys complained Sheriff Grady Judd was releasing too much information.

Judd, who joined news organizations in appealing the gag order, welcomed Spoto's decision and said in a statement, "By bringing attention to these kinds of cases, children, parents, schools and communities can learn from the mistakes of others and take steps to prevent this kind of senseless violence."

It's not clear from the court documents released this week whether the borrowed toiletries were behind the beating, but Lindsay said she became suspicious when Nichols' "rude and threatening" text messages turned friendly as she got closer to returning to Mulberry. Nichols kept asking Lindsay where she was and when she'd be back.

Lindsay was staying with Nichols at the Mulberry home of Lindsay's grandmother. When Lindsay reached the house, she said, "she was jumped and badly beaten by six teenage females while two male teenagers stood watch outside the residence," according to a detective's interview in the court documents.

In the interview, Lindsay's mother, Talisa, reveals that her daughter was thrust into the situation in part because things were difficult back home.

The beating occurred as Lindsay was spending spring break with Nichols. "Talisa advised me her daughter … had been allowed to stay with her friend, Mercades Nichols, due to problems at home," the detective said.

The interview contains Lindsay's blow-by-blow account of the beating and a car ride she was forced to take afterward.

Most of the events in this account are not visible on the three-minute segment of video released to news organizations by Judd. The full beating video, recorded for posting on MySpace and YouTube, runs more than 30 minutes.

Lindsay said in the interview she was surprised when she returned from Cocoa Beach to find not only Nichols, but two teenage boys sitting on the porch and one girl after another as she moved through the house trying to gather her things and leave.

She also said she was beaten in three different rooms of the house and forced to pose for a recording of her injuries. Once in the car, she said, the girls gave her a soda and were nice to her, saying her injuries were not that bad. They threatened her, she said, after she suggested she would tell her mother and father.

All eight defendants are being tried as adults and face up to life in prison on the kidnapping charge.

The three defendants in the car Brittni Hardcastle, Brittany Mayes and Nichols, all 17 – face additional felony charges of witness tampering.

The other three girls are April Cooper, 14; Kayla Hassell, 15; and Cara Murphy, 16. Two males, Shumaker, 18, and Zachary Ashley, 17, are accused of acting as lookouts.

Polk Circuit Judge J. Michael McCarthy issued the gag order April 9, shutting down comment about the case by attorneys, investigators and defendants.

McCarthy said then that the national attention the case received has "extended well beyond what needs to be done to educate the public."

The ruling Wednesday by Judge Spoto vacates the earlier order.

Editor Dennis Joyce can be reached at (813) 259-7604 or djoyce@tampatrib.com.

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