(THEODORE, Ala.) - Tiffany Dino says she’s not the violent, dangerous bully she’s being portrayed as.
“They’re making me seem like I’m an animal,” Dino said.
Dino was suspended for five days from Theodore High School and booked into Strickland Youth Center for assault after a physical confrontation hospitalized another girl at school.
“I’m sorry about what happened to Mary, but I just feel like I had to do what I had to do,” Dino says, maintaining she was defending herself.
16-year-old Mary Katherine Ory, a Junior and cheerleader at THS, claims she was hit from behind by Dino while walking away from a verbal spat, and then suffered a brutal and sustained beating. Ory’s mother says Dino is too violent and dangerous to be let back in school, and should be expelled from the Mobile County school system.
“This is the first fight I’ve been in at school,” Dino said.
Dino claims Ory left threatening voice mails on her cell phone leading up to the fight. Dino also claims it was Ory who approached her at school . She says Ory started verbally assaulting her. Dino says she felt threatened, and it broke into a face-to-face physical confrontation.
Ory is currently recovering at home. She spent Friday visiting doctors.
“I have a broken nose, they tell me my spleen is enlarged, and I have five stitches here, and stitches here,” Ory said, pointing out the injuries on her face.
The cheerleader says fighting has gotten out of control at Theodore High School, and she never thought she would be on the receiving end of a punch.
“There’s fights every other day, every week,” Ory says.
Some fights have been posted by students online. Some were taken down Friday by the user who posted them, but some videos remain on Facebook.
Ory’s mother says not enough is being done by school officials to stop and prevent fights.
“The doctor told me if my daughter was hit one more time, she wouldn’t be here,” Tori Ory said. “I would be visiting her at the morgue.”
Ory says she’s starting her own personal crusade to curtail violence at school, starting with pushing for Dino's expulsion.
The Mobile County School System tells Local 15 News the case is still under investigation. The principal of Theodore High School would have to recommend expulsion, and then have it decided by the board.
