Mom Chokes Boy Over Facebook Comments

To what lengths would you go to support and defend your child? According to WTSP.com, Debbie Piscitella from St. Petersburg, FL, choked one of her daughter’s classmates over comments he left on her daughter MacKenna’s Facebook photos.

The 14-year-old freshman named Jon had left lewd and sexually suggestive comments on several of MacKenna’s photos. "It was disgusting what they were saying about her," Debbie says. "It made me sick…[MacKenna] wanted to kill herself. She doesn't want to go do anything. She doesn't want to go out. She doesn't even want to go to her dance."

Plus: Your Guide to Cyber-Bullying

On Memorial Day, Debbie and MacKenna saw Jon in a local mall, and Debbie decided to take action against her daughter’s cyber bully. "I told him to stop saying those things about my daughter,” Debbie says, “and he kept walking and ignoring me. I just snapped."

Debbie then grabbed Jon’s backpack and began to choke him, leaving visible marks. After the attack, Jon called his mother and the police used surveillance footage to identify and arrest Debbie for child abuse—a third-degree felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Plus: Find Out if Your Child Is a Victim of Digital Bullying

"I don't care who you are,” says Jon’s mother Keysha Tipton, “if you're an adult, you don't put hands on a child." Keysha says if Debbie had confronted her directly about Jon’s actions, she would have made her son apologize immediately.

Do you think it was within Debbie’s rights to take matters into her own hands considering her daughter’s thoughts of suicide over the boy's comments?