Bullies allegedly lured Aydin Pedone, a 15-year-old kid from Hudson Falls, New York, to a nearby park in his Spider-Man costume, where he was viciously attacked and suffered a fractured nose.
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Who is Aydin Pedone?
Aydin Pedone is a 15-year-old New York middle-schooler who was bullied for dressing as Spider-Man. Pedone can be seen in the viral video surrounded by teens who are yelling insults at him and filming him after supposedly being persuaded to drop by a nearby park. One classmate can be heard asking whether Pedone’s “spider sense” is “tingling.”
Then a girl comes over and attempts to whack him in the face. Pedone successfully avoids the initial blow, but as he takes a deep breath, the girl pulls back once again and strikes him hard across the nose before turning around and giggling. After being thrown back into a fence, he struggled to remove his mask, allowing the youngsters to laugh as they watched blood stream from his broken nose down his face.
A few days after the incident, the girl was detained and charged with one felony count of assault in the second degree, according to the Hudson Falls Police Department. Aydin was left needing surgery to fix his nose. Her guardian was given a ticket for a juvenile appearance and told to show up at the Washington County Probation Office.
According to the New York Post, the boy’s mother, Shellie Pedone, said that the boy’s admiration for the Marvel superhero has led to ridicule and bullying from other children, especially after he entered the sixth grade.
“My son was attacked for the purpose of bored teenage entertainment, targeted for being different than them, and viciously attacked because of having the courage to stand out from the crowd and be himself,” Shellie Pedone, the boy’s mother, wrote on Facebook. “He has that kind of heart that only sees the good in people. Is this the kind of kid that deserves to have his nose broken, unprovoked, and witnessed by nearly a dozen peers standing around to watch, record and laugh at him?”
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As the video surfaced on social media, the incident touched a nerve with the locals who knew Pedone as a kind and caring young man who, according to them, had been bullied by classmates to the point where he started dressing as Spiderman to speak out against bullying in schools.
A superhero-themed cookout has been planned to metaphorically retake the park where Pedone was assaulted, and cosplayers from all over the country have flocked to record videos of support and encouragement using the hashtag #aydinsheroes. Moreover, since the attack, a GoFundMe page has raised over $10,000 to pay for Pedone’s martial arts training.
