The teen girl in Tennessee who went viral for running onto a football field and tackling a middle school player now reveals why she did it.
The incident in question occurred last week during a football game between South Middle School and Cornersville Middle School at Franklin County High School in Winchester, Tennessee.
During the fourth quarter, a player from South and a player from Cornersville engaged in a physical altercation and were flagged for unnecessary roughness. The referee called unnecessary roughness on the two players for the second time in the game. The officials ejected both of them from the game.
However, an obviously disgruntled 16-year-old girl apparently found that wasn’t good enough, so she ran onto the field and tackled one of the 13-year-old players. As a result of her actions, officials ejected her from the game, ejected Cornersville’s head coach, penalized the team for unsportsmanlike conduct, and fined Cornersville at least $250.
The girl was expected to be charged in juvenile court with disorderly conduct and assault and be banned from Franklin County Schools property.
The 16-year-old girl explained why she did it
The girl has since been identified as Addison Hunnicutt and she has explained why she did what she did in an interview with NewsChannel 5. Hunnicutt said she believed the other team was targeting her brother.
“I was not just going after this kid just to go after him because that was not my intention at all,” she said. “Seeing what they were doing to him and nobody’s stopping it that kind of made me like the last choice of okay, somebody has to stop this.”
She said one of the opposing team’s players grabbed her brother’s face mask and repeatedly threw him around. She said she had had enough when she watched him get struck in the ribs.
“That’s when I started to be like, ‘No, um, I’m done watching this,'” she said, later adding, “I really do love him and I would do anything for him.”
Addison Hunnicutt was, it turns out, charged with disorderly conduct and assault.
“I believe her little brother was actually being abused on that football field. What that other player was doing was not football,” Hunnicutt’s attorney David McKenzie said.