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Viral video of Beaumont elementary student beating will be hard to prosecute, Jefferson County DA said

"This is an unusual case," Jefferson County District Attorney Bob Wortham said.

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Texas — For the first time, Jefferson County district attorney Bob Wortham told 12News why the Beaumont mom shown beating her son in a viral video on social media in November came to Homer Elementary School in the first place.

"The mother received a phone call from the teacher saying her son was being very disruptive, stealing food doing stuff like that, and giving other kids a hard time," Wortham said. "So she said, I'm going to come up there and straighten him out."

Shortly after, the video of the incident went viral, before being pulled from social media.

"When you watch the video, you become insanely mad at the mother because of what she does and what she says and how she reacts," Wortham said.

Brittanie Thomas faces a third degree felony charge for injury to a child. Child Protective Services confirms her five kids remain in state custody. Many believe she went too far.

"Where's the line between going crazy and disciplining your child," Wortham said. "I think she may have crossed the line."

Bob Wortham said even though there's video evidence, this is a case that won't be easy to take to court, because police found no marks on her son's body after the incident.

"You can have injuries beyond physical," he said. "You can have mental injuries and the way she talked to him and the way she acted, it's going to be interesting."

Wortham said he's going to have to speak with both Beaumont ISD Police and the Beaumont Police Department for guidance on where to go from here.

"We have to look and see what was the mother's intent," he said. "This is a case where you normally wouldn't have to prove intent, but in this case, we may have to go a bit further to see exactly what could have and what should have or may have happened."

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