Mother charged with injuring a grade-school boy may have confronted the wrong bully

The first step in confronting a bully is to make sure you have the right one. A Santa Rosa, California, mother is learning this the hard way, a sheriff's official said Monday.

Sheriff's deputies said that on Friday, Delia Garcia-Bratcher grabbed a 12-year-old boy by the throat to warn him against bullying her daughter. She had asked her son, who also attends Olivet Elementary Charter School, which student had been bothering his sister, The Associated Press reports. One problem, authorities say, is that there is no evidence linking the boy to bullying, and investigators are looking into whether there is another student who harassed the girl.

The other problem is that, according to kids who witnessed the encounter (no other adults were present) and red marks photographed on the boy's neck, Garcia-Bratcher grabbed somebody's child by the neck. She was arrested Saturday on suspicion of inflicting injury on a child, and was later released on $30,000 bail. Through her lawyer, Ben Adams, she said she never touched the boy. "She does not deny confronting the boy and telling him to 'knock it off,' but she absolutely denies touching him," Adams told The Associated Press.

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