Mom IDs son as teen left with brain injuries from YMCA ambush by fellow Edina High School students

A mother has identified her son as the teenager who was left with numerous injuries after being ambushed by a group of fellow Edina High School students in the city’s YMCA last month.

Abeba Guche said son Elroi Beyene, 16, suffered brain injuries, a cut below one eye, bruises and several other injuries from the Dec. 20 attack at the Y in the 7300 block of York Avenue S.

“Three weeks later, he is still struggling physically and mentally,” Guche wrote for an online fundraising campaign that she started over the weekend as the medical bills mounted.

“I am a single mom, and Elroi was working part time and is now unable to work under the doctor orders,” she noted. “I have had to cut my hours in order to care for him and take him to follow-up appointments.”

Two teenage boys were charged Friday among the six arrested in connection with the “planned assault” that occurred about 6 p.m. on the basketball court, one of the charging documents read.

Police said Beyene showed signs of a declining mental state and memory difficulties before being hospitalized.

A 16-year-old boy was arrested Wednesday in Edina, police said, and three more boys were arrested Thursday: a 17-year-old and a 14-year-old in Edina, and a 16-year-old in Bloomington. On Friday, a 17-year-old was arrested in Edina. A sixth suspect, 17, turned himself at the Edina Police Department on Saturday, police said.

Charged as of Friday afternoon are one teenager who was 15 at the time of the incident and another who was 16, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said.

While prosecutors cannot release more about the charges against the 15-year-old, the juvenile petition filed against the Bloomington 16-year-old listed charges of aiding and abetting both third-degree assault and third-degree riot. It also spelled out a brief description of what went on inside the Y that night while not revealing a motive:

Police were called to the Y and learned that numerous young males were let in through the rear-exit door. The group went to the gym and assaulted Beyene, “who tried to run away.”

Surveillance video captured 13 teens in all entering the building while wearing hooded sweatshirts and masks.

Beyene told police that he believed everyone in the group was an Edina High School student and that he could identify some of them.

The teen showed signs of confusion and was taken by emergency medical responders to a hospital and “diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury,” the petition noted.

The 16-year-old who was charged admitted to police that he went “to the YMCA because of the planned assault [and] admitted that he hit the victim two or three times and kicked him once.”

The charged 16-year-old appeared in court Friday afternoon and was released to his mother but put on electronic home monitoring. He’s due back in court Jan. 27.