Eight teens arrested in filmed beating

Victoria Lindsay was attacked on March 30 by six teenage girls when she arrived at a friend’s home, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.

Two girls confronted Lindsay when she walked in, yelling and threatening her, an arrest report showed. Another girl struck her in the head several times and then slammed her head into the bedroom wall, knocking her unconscious.

When she woke up, she was on the couch in the living room surrounded by the six girls. The teens blocked the door, held Lindsay down and began beating her, the report said. Two teenage boys waited outside the home as lookouts. All eight were charged last week with battery and false imprisonment, which are third-degree felonies, the report said.

Lindsay was taken to the hospital by ambulance and treated for a concussion, damage to her left eye and left ear, and numerous bruises, the report said.

Lindsay’s father said the teens’ motivation for the attack was to produce a video that would become popular on YouTube, a video-sharing Web site. But the mother of one of the girls said that Lindsay had provoked the other teens by threatening and insulting them on MySpace, a social networking Web site. The video and a transcript of the incident will be released early this week, sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilder told The Ledger of Lakeland. It’s not immediately clear if the video was ever posted on the Internet.