[BloggingRefGuy]

Let's grant everything--let's assume the kid who got pummeled did all kinds of terrible stuff--elbowing, name-calling, shoving, or worse. Let's assume the kid who did the pummeling did nothing in the lead-up.

Does ANYTHING justify four punches to the head of an unconscious person? Ever? Nobody who's coming to the defense of the attacker has answered that to my satisfaction.

Yes, we don't know started it. Yes, a more carefully-officiated game could have prevented this whole thing. But that's not what's at issue here. No matter who the instigator was (and I agree that we don't have enough information to tell), once you've got a defenseless unconscious kid on the ground, only a really, really dangerous human being would punch him four times. Anger management is in order...or maybe juvie. How does this attacker react if one of us accidentally cuts him off on the highway?

In spite of my earlier question to this effect, nobody has convinced me otherwise. It is not the cause of the attack that's disturbing here--it's the severity of it. In this conversation, that issue has been overlooked. So I'll put it back up at center focus:

Does anybody want to sugggest that repeated punches to the face of a prone, unconscious person are defensible or reasonable under any circumstances?