NANAIMO - A video of two Nanaimo teen girls fighting has been removed from the popular Youtube website.
The move came as police in the Vancouver Island community examine the possibility of laying charges in the case.
The video showed two girls wrestling and punching each other as several dozen teens cheered them on. The incident took place in what appeared to be a parking lot behind a convenience store, not far from a local high school.
The teens who stood and watched could also face disciplinary action, Jamie Brennan, chairman of the Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District.
Brennan was not surprised the fight wound up on the Internet.
''It's not a shock,'' he said. ''Kids have access to the technology.''
He said the "mob frenzy'' that surrounded the fight is unacceptable.
"We want students to be able to resolve conflict non-violently and to work things out,'' he said.
The footage was viewed thousands of times.
The violence seen in the tape is nothing new to Nanaimo.
Brennan said another such incident also took place recently.
And, in North Bay, Ont., a similar incident has led to a father demanding that video cameras and cellphones with cameras be banned from schools.
The father said the incident made him "sick'' and he predicted there will be other fights until schools ban video cameras and cellphones.
The 26-second video clip, which has since been removed from the video-sharing website, showed his daughter hitting another girl while other students encouraged her.
Police did not lay charges and the school board has now blocked access to the site on school computers.
Experts said the fact the fights are taped and posted on the Internet are very much intertwined.
The audience is a large part of the appeal for the perpetrators of these videos, said Raymond Corrado, a criminology professor who studies youth violence at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., in an interview with the Canadian Press in February.
"Within their peer group it's a record of violence, it's a record of intimidation and in their mind the bullies see that as another way of enhancing their reputation,'' Corrado said. "That's enormously enticing for these kids to think that they have a national reputation . . . as being tough.''
The fact that it has been posted on the Internet also speaks to youth's sense of invincibility, he added.
"That goes to show you how little these teenagers really do think about consequences. If they're on videotape, there's no issue as to who did what in terms of police charges.''
Violence involving teen girls took a murderous twist in 1997 when Reena Virk was taken below Victoria's Craigflower Bridge where she was beaten and drowned.
Kelly Ellard, 15 at the time, was charged in the death of Virk, 14.
Ellard was raised to adult court and after three trials she was convicted in April 2005 of second-degree murder. A fourth trial is expected after another appeal.
Ellard's accomplice, Warren Glowatski, convicted of second-degree murder, was granted unescorted temporary passes from prison by the National Parole Board last year.
And last month, a 15-year-old Victoria girl was hospitalized after being attacked by a gang of youths.
Police responded to a call to find the girl distraught and bleeding. She told officers she had been attacked by two young men and two young women.
About an hour later, police received a report of another similar assault. A police dog unit followed a scent from one of the scenes to a beach where a 21-year-old man, a 20-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl were arrested.
