Chicago teen's beating death captured on camera

Tension between gangs of teenagers in Chicago's schools that last year saw the killing of a record 42 young people has reached a peak in the city following the beating to death of a 16-year-old that was captured on camera.

The mobile phone footage of the murder of Derrion Albert on Thursday has shocked a city already numbed by high levels of gang violence. (WARNING: linked video contains graphic images.)

The video, shown by local TV stations and posted on YouTube before being deleted, shows a fight between about 50 teenaged boys that took place about half a mile from Fenger High School which Albert attended.

Albert is seen being struck on the head by a boy in a purple shirt who hits him from behind with a long wooden board, thought to be a part of a railway sleeper. Albert falls to the ground, then stands up and is immediately punched in the face by another boy. He slumps to the ground a second time and stays down for more than a minute. Then he struggles onto his feet for a third time, at which point a separate boy strikes him again over the head with a wooden board before a fourth boy stomps on top of his head.

That time he stays down for good.

Four teenagers aged 16 to 19 have been charged with first-degree murder and police say they are looking for three more.

The murder comes after parents at Fenger High School had been reporting unusually high levels of tension. Just hours before the street fight, a gun was fired outside the school.

The street melee is believed to have taken place between two rival gangs - one from a subsidised housing project called Altgeld Gardens and the other from an adjacent neighbourhood known as the Ville.

Extra police and squad cars have been posted outside Fenger in the wake of the killing. The city authorities have also sent in additional buses to ferry children to and from school in an attempt to avoid further gang fighting.

Theories differ as to how Albert got involved. Some reports suggest he merely stumbled into the middle of the two gangs; others say that he was punished for refusing to join one of the gangs. Albert's killing, like most of the youth murders in Chicago, took place in the poor and largely African-American south side of the city. President Barack Obama, whose family home is in Chicago, has spoken about the violence.

In July 2007, shortly after one of the most notorious killings of 16-year-old Blair Holt, then Senator Obama said: "Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds. Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we've lost."

After Albert's muder, Blair Holt's mother, Annette, said: "Someone said he [Albert] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"No, he wasn't. He was in the right place. He was coming from school."

This article was amended on 1 October 2009. The original said that President Obama's family home was near the scene of the killing. This has been corrected.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaK%2Bfp7mle5FpZ3Jno5q9cH6YaJqhoZOWtLB5w56pq6Gfo3qiuMGeqa1lkpqutbXNoGSvoZSavA%3D%3D