PALMETTO — The mother of a 16-year-old Palmetto High School student was arrested Wednesday on child abuse charges, accused of encouraging her daughter to fight another student, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office reported.

The girl told her mother, April Newcomb, that she was planning to fight another 16-year-old girl Friday in an empty lot on 17th Street West near Emerson Point, the report stated.

According to the report, the fight was over when deputies arrived.

A YouTube video of the fight led the sheriff’s office to Newcomb, authorities said.

In the video, Newcomb, 39, is not shown making any attempt to stop the fight, the report stated.

The video also showed dozens of students, many recording the incident on phones, gathering around the two fighters.

As of 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, the video had been taken off the website. The sheriff’s office did not have anything to do with the video being taken down, according to sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow.

Newcomb told deputies she couldn’t say why she didn’t break up the fight or call deputies.

“Of course, we’re both wrong and I understand that, and I understand where y’all are coming from,” Newcomb said in an interview with deputies. “I think unfortunately it was going to happen, no matter what.”

Neither of the girls was seriously injured in the fight.

The video showed the two girls throwing punches, pulling hair and knocking each other to the ground. As the two brawled, dozens of students can be seen gathered around, many recording the incident on their phones.

Newcomb can be heard on the video shouting words of encouragement as the fight went on.

“The entire incident is disturbing, especially because the parent did not intervene,” Bristow said.

He said this is not the first video of a local fight that has been posted on YouTube.

“We’re not naive to it,” he said. There were three videos of this fight posted on the Internet, according to the sheriff’s office report.

Newcomb arrived on the scene after the fight had already begun, detectives said. She told authorities she went to the fight to make sure it did not get out of hand and no one got hurt.

Her daughter had sustained a skull fracture two years ago, and Newcomb said she was worried that she would get hit in the back of the head.

The other juvenile’s mother arrived at the scene of the fight toward the end, and she confronted Newcomb about how she could let the incident happen, the report stated.

The other mother and the teenagers had not been charged as of Wednesday night.

On the Palmetto High School campus, where both girls attend school, students had seen the video of the fight by Wednesday afternoon. One student called Newcomb’s actions “dumb” and used the same word to describe the fight in general.

District officials learned about the fight Wednesday afternoon and were reviewing it to see if it warranted any action on the district’s part.

The school board has a policy that addresses off-campus incidents that may create any safety concern on campus, said Mike McCann, supervisor of alternative programs for the district.

“Fights happen between students off campus that we never know about, and even if we do most of the time, there’s nothing that could be done,” said Mike Barber, a district spokesman. “But if we feel there’s a reasonable concern that this fight might come back to school grounds and present a problem there, then it could lead to some action being taken by the district.”

That could include student suspension, expulsion or a school transfer.

If students are arrested, they have 48 hours to notify their principal, under the student code of conduct. Even if students are not convicted of a crime, they can be suspended from school extracurricular activities, including sports.

A student’s principal and Angela Essig, the district director of school management, determine whether the student should be suspended from extracurricular activities, suspended from school or reassigned to another one.

The investigation into the Palmetto fight is ongoing, Bristow said.

As of late Wednesday night, Newcomb was in Manatee County jail on a $15,000 bond.