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Serial

The Kids of Rutherford County - Ep. 1

Serial

Serial Productions & The New York Times

True Crime, News, Society & Culture

4.581.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A police officer in Rutherford County, Tenn., sees a video of little kids fighting, and decides to investigate. This leads to the arrest of 11 kids for watching the fight. The arrests do not go smoothly. From Serial Productions and The New York Times in partnership with ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio, “The Kids of Rutherford County” is reported and hosted by Meribah Knight, a Peabody-award winning reporter based in the South.

Transcript

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0:00.0

These first two episodes of the kids of Rutherford County are free, but to hear the whole

0:07.4

series you'll need to subscribe to the New York Times, where you'll get access to all serial

0:12.0

production shows and all the New York Times

0:14.2

podcasts and it's super easy. You can sign up through Apple Podcasts or Spotify and if you're

0:19.4

already a time subscriber just link your account and you're done.

0:22.6

It was a March afternoon in Rutherford County, Tennessee, a growing community about 30 miles southeast of Nashville.

0:36.7

School was out for the day and a dozen or so little kids were playing a game of pickup basketball

0:41.2

in someone's backyard.

0:43.0

And then, as kids do, one said something about another kid's mom.

0:48.0

This insult led to some shoving.

0:50.0

And then as kids also do, one of them pulled out a cell phone and started filming.

0:55.0

There's some kind of heavy neon filter over the whole video,

1:00.0

so it's hard to make out any faces, but here's what you can see. An eight-year-old boy, hands shoved

1:05.8

into the pockets of his oversized parka, is trying to walk away from everyone, when a smaller

1:10.8

boy, about five or six, runs up behind him and smacks him in the back a few times.

1:16.0

Then another little kid runs up and takes his turn, throws a couple feeble punches to the back of the kid walking away.

1:24.7

Some of the older boys areagging them on.

1:27.1

Meantime, off camera, you can hear one girl try to break it up.

1:35.0

Other kids just stand around watching and a few of them are also filming on their phones

1:41.0

and then the video just ends. It's the type of fight that

1:47.3

barely seems worth posting online, but that happened anyway, and soon the video

1:52.0

started to make the rounds, spreading

...

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