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Ohio mom convicted of assault in schoolhouse brawl

Precious Allen, 31, pictured at Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas in Cincinnati on Friday, was sentenced to 179 days in jail, but the jail time was suspended.
Precious Allen, 31, pictured at Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas in Cincinnati on Friday, was sentenced to 179 days in jail, but the jail time was suspended.Amanda Lee Myers / AP

Precious Allen, a Cincinnati nurse's aide who got into a fight with a 15-year-old girl at her daughter's high school, was convicted of assault Friday and sentenced to probation.

Allen, 31, was acquitted of a second charge of trespassing in connection with the Feb. 7 brawl at Withrow High School, in which the victim was hit in the face with a padlock. The judge sentenced Allen to 179 days in jail but suspended the sentence and said she could serve the time on probation.

Allen took the stand Friday and told jurors that the 15-year-old girl had been bullying her daughter for some time. She said the teen started the fight by cursing at her, calling her names and shoving her face with an open hand.    

Before she knew it, the two girls were fighting, she said, according to NBC station WLWT of Cincinnati.

Allen — who was in full scrubs on the way to her job as a nurse's aide — said she yanked her daughter away and took her into the hallway, but the other girl "burst through ... swinging." 

"She was in a rage," Allen said.

The 15-year-old victim testified Thursday that she never bullied Allen's daughter. In fact, she said, they had been friends before the fight, but a disagreement turned physical.

The young woman testified that, instead of trying to pull her daughter away, Allen egged the fight on.

"She was just, like, staring at me, shaking her head," she testified, quoting Allen as saying, "'Oh yeah, you need to fight her.'"

In closing arguments, Assistant City Prosecutor Eric Cook said it was Allen who "acted like a child."

"She confronted a child half her age," Cook told the jurors. "Each step, she had a chance to act like an adult and step back."

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