Parent wants to stop teen 'fight club'

KINGWOOD, TX There's no telling how long these fights have been going on, but we've been talking to parents and students who say they've been happening for some time. They're on the Internet, and they are especially disturbing when you consider that some of those involved are only freshmen in high school.

It's not the kind of after-school activity most parents would want for their children. But these staged fights, some of them just yards away from the Kingwood Park High School campus, are apparently common and involve a large number of students.

We found more than a dozen videos posted to the website YouTube. The mother who told us about them is disgusted.

"I know boys will be boys and fight," said the mother, who ABC13 isn't identifying. "But when they're fighting for entertainment purposes, that's not right."

She's further upset because she says on Monday, her 18-year-old son was accosted on his way home from school and forced into one of these otherwise voluntary fights.

She says he did not hit back and suffered a concussion, among other injuries.

"They are just going out, picking out random kids and beating them down," the mother said. "They're all filming it, thinking it's a joke, but it's not a joke when somebody gets hurt."

The school district tells us they are aware of stage fights that happen after school and on the weekends. But since they are off campus, they are powerless to stop them.

Though, whenever they learn of the fights in advance, they warn the Houston Police Department.

"If something happens off campus and after hours, it really becomes a police matter at that point," Humble ISD Spokeswoman Karen Collier said. "And what we most often have to do is to urge parents or anyone with any information about it to go to the police."

HPD would not talk on camera about the teenage fight club but did acknowledge that the school alerted its Kingwood officers to a planned fight just two weeks ago.

However, the fights haven't stopped, as this mother hopes for before someone gets more seriously hurt or worse.

"They might think it's all fun and games, but when they're sitting behind bars without a future, it's not fun and games no more," she said.

That mother contacted the Houston Police Department, which confirmed to ABC13 that they are investigating what happened to her son.

As for the school district, officials said they cannot act until a student is convicted of a crime. Then they can take disciplinary action and remove the child from class, possibly placing them in an alternative school.