VALLEJO (CBS13) – A girl’s mother says her bullied daughter will not return her school in the Vallejo School District, where parents say bullying is an ongoing problem.

It’s still very difficult for 12-year-old Makiya Howell to talk about the attack.

She was trapped in the girl’s bathroom at Solano Middle School, surrounded by more than a dozen girls two weeks ago, and being punched and kicked while a classmate captures the attack on her cell phone.

“If I didn’t get out of that bathroom they’re really going to try and hurt me,” said Howell.

She’s been bullied all year about her appearance.

“I’m overweight. You’re a nerd and nobody likes you,” Howell said the bullies called her.

Before the attack, she wrote an essay about her life, how she wishes it was over.

“When people treat me like an outsider it makes me die each time. Someone calls me fat and ugly; it makes me feel like a waste of space,” Howell read from her essay.


The day she was be*ten, teachers were across campus diffusing another fight. So, no one heard Howell’s cries for help.

As for the attacker, Howell doesn’t know the girl. She doesn’t even know her name.

“Does it have to be your child before you’re really concerned?” asks Howell’s grandmother Sonya Mitchell.

Her grandmother is disappointed, saying the school district is downplaying the incident.

“We’ve had a hard time coping with the situation,” said Mitchell.

School officials refused to speak to CBS13 but other parents did.

“We’re moving. So yeah, my daughter is not coming to this school next year either,” said one mother. “It’s that bad.”

Howell was lucky to escape.

“If the fight never ended on the campus with the other boys, I would have still been in the other bathroom,” said Howell.

Howell’s grandmother is now reaching out to a private attorney to deal with the school district.

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