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Two coaches, players charged in hazing case

CHICAGO, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- Two assistant football coaches and four students at a Chicago school have been charged with battery in the alleged videotaped beating of a student with belts.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported the Prosser Career Academy assistant coaches Tom Cipriani, 47, and Jonathan Manning, 21, are each charged with battery and endangering the health or life of a child, both misdemeanors. Manning also faces another misdemeanor charge for allegedly videotaping the Oct. 18 incident in which four football players allegedly beat a 14-year-old student with belts at the northwest Chicago school.

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The older students, two of them 17, two, 18, have been charged with misdemeanor battery in the incident, the Chicago Tribune reported.

WLS-TV, Chicago, reported school officials said the coaches have been barred from campus and will be dismissed, and the students face a 10-day suspension and possible expulsion.

Neither coach could be reached for comment, the Sun-Times said.

Some Prosser students said those allegedly involved in the hazing should not have faced criminal charges.

"There was no harm to (the victim). He didn't get no bruises or nothing," football player Antonio Hillard told WLS.

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Hillard and another football player, Kenden Jones, said one of the assistant coaches told the four players to haze the 14-year-old, a freshman.

Chicago Public Schools ban hazing or violence of any kind.

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