On Friday night, Taylor McFadden, 18, Tatum Bohanon, 19, and Alexandra DeRusso, 19, visited the Deptford Mall in New Jersey to buy Christmas gifts and get their eyebrows threaded. After leaving the mall at 8 p.m., McFadden sat in the driver’s seat of her car while Bohanon and DeRusso smoked a cigarette outside in the parking lot.
A white Pontiac carrying two women and two men stopped behind them. “They had their turn signal on like they were waiting for us to leave the parking space,” McFadden tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “Allie signaled to them that we were staying so they took another parking spot.”
The group walked past McFadden’s car on their way to the mall. “I heard them mumbling but I wasn’t really listening,” she says. “One of the women said, ‘I hope you aren’t talking about us.’ We didn’t understand. Allie said, ‘Ma’am, you’re too old to be dealing with people our age.’
“The tall woman smacked Allie in the face and the man grabbed Tatum and threw her toward the front of the car where she hit her head,” McFadden tells Yahoo Lifestyle. She left her car while dialing 911 and read the license plate number to the operator. “I just remember repeating the plate numbers over and over again.”
McFadden says there was a mall security van parked nearby but it was empty. Bohanon ran into the mall screaming for help and McFadden tried to assist DeRusso who received most of the blows.
“One woman yelled, “You dumb white girls, dumb b****es are stupid,” she says. “I told her, ‘I am half-black and half-white and she said, ‘I’m not talking to you then.'”
While trying to pull DeRusso from the fray, McFadden says a man punched her in the face and head. “It took me a minute to realize it was a man, but I knew from the force,” she says. At the same time, a woman grabbed her face and pushed her neck back.
Teens Tatum Bohanon (L), Alexandra DeRusso (R), and Taylor McFadden (not pictured), were attacked by a group of adults in the parking lot of the Deptford Mall in New Jersey. (Photo: Courtesy of Taylor McFadden)
Suddenly, the attack, which McFadden says lasted only a few minutes, was over. “They got in their car and drove off but first sped forward us as if they were going to hit us,” she says.
After the police arrived, the girls went to Jefferson Washington Township Hospital where all three were diagnosed with concussions. “It feels like I have a constant migraine and it’s tough to move my neck,” she says. Additionally, McFadden has a cervical sprain in her neck, DeRusso two black eyes and Bohanon a cervical sprain and bruised ribs.
Representatives from the Deptford Mall and The Deptford Township Police Department did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment. McFadden tells Yahoo Lifestyle that their case has been assigned to an investigator and she’s optimistic the alleged assailants will be located.
“We’re not angry, we just want to know why adults attacked a group of kids,” says McFadden. “Over a parking space?”
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The attack is shown in the upper right-hand corner of the mall surveillance video.