SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Northern California mother suspected of attacking a 12-year-old boy she said was
bullying her daughter at school may have targeted the wrong child, a sheriff’s official said Monday.
Investigators have not found evidence linking the boy to the bullying allegations, Sonoma County
sheriff’s Lt. Steve Brown said. He said they are looking into whether another child may have harassed
the girl.
“We are unable to determine if any bullying ever occurred,” Brown said. “We don’t know if this kid
bullied this girl at all. It looks like he did not. We can’t find anybody to say that he did.”
The girl’s mom, Delia Garcia-Bratcher, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of inflicting injury on a child
after sheriff’s deputies say she came to Olivet Elementary Charter School in Santa Rosa on Friday and
grabbed the boy by the throat. She asked her son, who also attends the school, to point out who was
bullying her daughter, the sheriff’s office said.
Garcia-Bratcher’s lawyer, Ben Adams, said Monday that his client is very upset over the accusation and
adamantly denies attacking the boy.
“She does not deny confronting the boy and telling him to ‘knock it off,’ but she absolutely denies
touching him,” Adams said.
While Garcia-Bratcher may have broken an administrative rule by not signing in when she arrived at the
school, she had every right to protect her children, he said.
“I don’t know what the DA will charge her with, and if they do, we will absolutely fight it vigorously
every step of the way,” Adams said.
The Sonoma County district attorney’s office was awaiting the sheriff’s report before deciding on filing
any criminal charges, a spokeswoman said Monday.
Garcia-Bratcher’s children did not attend school Monday as a precaution, Adams said. He also did not know
if they would return Tuesday.
“I don’t want them getting harassed,” he said. “They’ve gone through enough already.”
While several students saw Friday’s incident, no adults witnessed what happened, said Brown, the
lieutenant. The students later told a deputy that Garcia-Bratcher threatened the boy about bullying her
daughter. The school staff took photos of red marks on the boy’s neck, Brown said.
On Saturday, Garcia-Bratcher came into the sheriff’s office to give a statement and was briefly taken
into custody, Brown said. She was later released on $30,000 bail.
“Even if some bullying did occur, that doesn’t change the crime that the mother allegedly committed,”
Brown said.
Meanwhile, school officials also were investigating whether the girl was bullied. Officials from the
Piner-Olivet Union School District gave parents a flier Monday about the incident and reminded them
about the school’s visitation policy.
“It’s terrible when this kind of thing happens. We take it very seriously,” Superintendent Jennie Snyder
said. “Incidents like these are very rare, and when they do happen, we respond.”