VILLA RICA, Ga. (AP) — A 12-year-old girl was taken to a hospital and died days after she collapsed in the street following a fistfight near a school bus stop in her Georgia neighborhood, according to police.
The death of sixth grader Jada West is being investigated by police in suburban Villa Rica, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Atlanta.
Sgt. Spencer Crawford, a police spokesman, said Wednesday that investigators are reviewing evidence, including cellphone video of the fight, and are awaiting autopsy results. He said police plan to meet later this week with prosecutors, who will ultimately decide whether to bring charges.
The fight between Jada and another student from Mason Creek Middle School broke out at an intersection near the girl's home on Thursday afternoon, Crawford said.
Cellphone video posted by Jada's aunt on social media shows a school bus leaving the scene more than 90 seconds before any punches get thrown. The video shows Jada and another girl yelling and taunting each other while standing a good distance apart. A group of classmates stands watching them.
Someone can be heard saying, “Who is going to fight you over some noise?”
The video shows both girls putting down their backpacks at roughly the same time. They approach each other and then begin throwing punches. Within seconds, they fall to the pavement, clutching each other, with Jada landing on her back and rolling backward feet-first over her head and neck.
Both girls stand up before a woman intervenes, and the adult can be heard telling Jada to go home. The video shows Jada picking up her backpack and appearing to walk away when the clip ends.
It's unclear what happened next, but Jada didn't make it home. Crawford said police were dispatched on a call of “a young juvenile who was in cardiac arrest laying in the street.”
“When we actually arrived, paramedics were on the scene, and they were already loading her up and performing CPR,” Crawford said. "Paramedics told us there was an adult on the scene performing CPR when they arrived.”
Jada was taken to a hospital. On Sunday, her mother, Rashunda McClendon, posted a video to Facebook asking people to “please pray for my baby. She's fighting for her life.”
Jada's aunt, De'Quala McClendon, later announced on Facebook on Sunday that her niece had died.
“Now you got your spiritual crown,” she wrote, “it hurts so so bad but I know you are ok.”
Rashunda McClendon declined to speak with an Associated Press reporter who came to her home on Wednesday.
A paper sign staked into the ground near the scene of the fight said, “RIP JADA WEST,” and bore the message: “Heaven gain an angel.” A bouquet and a plastic pinwheel were left beside it.
Douglas County District Attorney Dalia Racine said in a statement that her office is aware of the police investigation into Jada's death but gave no further comment.
The Douglas County School System, in a statement, described Jada as “an upbeat, kind, and vibrant student.” It said counselors were made available at the school to speak with students and staff.
“This incident did not occur on school property or during school hours, and there is nothing to indicate that this is related to any on-campus activity,” the school district's statement said.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
A sign outside Mason Creek Middle School in Winston, Ga., displays a message, Wednesday March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Kate Brumback)
A paper sign left in memory of Jada West stands in her neighborhood in Villa Rica, Ga., Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Kate Brumback)
JERUSALEM (AP) — When Hersh Goldberg-Polin was in the tunnels in Gaza, fellow hostages say he often quoted a line from Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.’”
Through his long months in captivity, family and friends hoped that, like Frankl, he would come back with a message of hope. Then, in August 2024, after nearly a year in captivity, he and five other hostages were shot dead by their captors deep underground, likely as Israeli forces were closing in.
The quest for his why has fallen to his family, who led a high-profile campaign for his release. His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, has a new book released Tuesday.
“When We See You Again” has no narrative arc, no tidy uplifting message, no score settling with the Hamas militants who killed her son or the Israeli leaders who many blamed for his death — only a searing account of her grief.
She hasn’t yet decided whether the book is an exceptionally painful love story, or a love-filled pain story.
“I’m still trying to figure out with clarity what is my why, but it’s clear to me that my why is not done,” Goldberg-Polin said, a photo of a smiling Hersh behind her. “I just really wanted to tell the truth. It’s very ugly.”
Hersh was among the 251 people abducted by Hamas in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. His hand was blown off by a grenade before he was dragged into Gaza and eventually into the militant group’s labyrinth of tunnels.
The war sparked by the attack led to the killing of over 70,000 Palestinians and the destruction of much of Gaza before a ceasefire deal in October led to the release of all the remaining hostages. Hersh had been killed, along with five other hostages, more than a year earlier.
Rachel had campaigned tirelessly for her son’s release, appearing in countless media interviews, meeting with then-President Joe Biden and addressing the Democratic National Convention. She also joined mass protests in Israel accusing the government of failing to reach a deal sooner.
Her son was among the best-known hostages. Posters and graffiti with his name and face still appear across the country, often bearing the line popularized by Frankl.
In her memoir, Rachel takes care not to mythologize him. She notes that he picked his scabs as a kid and was bad at doing dishes.
“Hersh has become a symbol to many,” Goldberg-Polin writes in the book. “I don’t know what to do with that. But it’s OK. If people need Hersh to be something, he will be that. That is the essence of service, being what is needed.”
Rachel grew up in Chicago and moved to Israel with her husband and three children when Hersh, the oldest, was 6. She tells stories from the “before time”: of how Hersh as a child would wow people with his encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. presidents, and how he loved Jerusalem's local soccer team and their sister team in Bremen, Germany.
She only briefly touches on his capture and the details of his captivity, which have been widely reported. She writes about their desperate search for information in the chaotic and terrifying days after the attack, their long fight for his release and the news of Hersh's killing, along with five others, after 328 days.
The book is mostly a “very raw, peeled, oozing, throbbing pain,” Goldberg-Polin said. She describes “hundreds of sodden days dripping with anguish.”
“The book really started just as a way of taking this tremendous weight of suffering that was causing my soul to buckle,” she said in an interview in Jerusalem.
The writing came out in bursts, without a plan for a final project, just a question of “How do I survive the next 15 minutes?” she said.
The book emerged in part from her frustration when people asked how she was. “I think, ‘Well, do you not see this dagger sticking out of my chest at my heart? How can you possibly be asking me that?’” she said. “But I realized they don’t see it. And it’s not because they’re mean or insensitive. They simply don’t see it.”
“Someone who’s born blind doesn’t know what blue is, and it’s very difficult to describe blue to someone who’s blind. But I’m desperate for people to see my blue, and I’m yearning for people to feel my pain,” she said.
Then there were those who wanted to share their own stories of death and loss, even during her son’s shiva, the traditional Jewish week of mourning after the funeral. It’s an experience that she describes as overwhelming and eye-opening, revealing the “surplus of suffering” in the world.
“They’re not trying to comfort me, they’re saying: ‘Let me stand next to you and we’ll be in this together,’” she said.
During the campaign to release the hostages, one of Rachel’s mantras was “Hope is mandatory,” even when it felt impossible. Now, wherever they go, people ask her and her husband for a bit of their creased and crumpled hope.
She has no easy answers, as she tells Hersh in a letter addressed to her dead son near the end of the book.
“I will carry your why,” she writes. “I'll do it, I’ll carry your why around the world.”
FILE - Jon Polin, left, and Rachel Goldberg, parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, pictured on screen speak during the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - Friends and supporters of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped to the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, protest outside of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence to demand a deal for the immediate release of all hostages, after Hamas released a video of Goldberg-Polin, in Jerusalem, Wednesday, April 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)
FILE - Jonathan Polin and Rachel Goldberg, parents of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was killed in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip, attend their son's funeral in Jerusalem, Monday, Sept. 2, 2024. (Gil Cohen-Magen/Pool via AP, File)
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose 23-year-old son, Hersh, was kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas cross border attack on Israel and killed in Gaza nearly a year later, poses for a photo in Jerusalem, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose 23-year-old son, Hersh, was kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas cross border attack on Israel and killed in Gaza nearly a year later, poses for a photo with her new book "When We See You Again," in Jerusalem, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
