LANSING (AP) – Two parents encouraged their 7-year-old boy to punch a fellow first-grader at a Lansing school before attacking a 73-year-old crossing guard who tried to intervene, police and district officials said.



Authorities are seeking charges Friday against the 29-year-old woman and 26-year-old man.



The boys had been involved in a fight at Lyons Elementary School on Wednesday, said Lansing police Lt. Noel Garcia.



He said the parents of one of the boys drove to the school on Thursday morning to find the other 7-year-old. They let their son out of the vehicle and yelled at him to beat the other child, Garcia told the Lansing State Journal.



The couple’s 7-year-old punched the other boy, knocking him to the ground, police said.



When the crossing guard tried to intervene, the father punched him in the face, and the mother punched him in the back of the head, Garcia said.



The elderly man suffered a chipped front tooth as a result of the beating, he said.



The parents and child then left the scene.



“Our crossing guards do it for the love of the children, for the safety of the children, and for something like this to happen is just preposterous,” Garcia said. “It’s just unfathomable. We can’t even imagine why they did what they did.”



Lansing School District spokesman Stephen Serkaian confirmed the two first-graders attend Lyons Elementary.



“This is a typical schoolboy playground incident that went completely haywire when the parents overreacted in an inappropriate way,” he said.





(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)