11-Year-Old Girl Dies Hours After Fight With Classmate

Police in California say they don't know what killed an 11-year-old girl who died following an afterschool fight in an alley with another girl her age.

Authorities said Friday's fight, which was planned ahead of time and lasted less than a minute, didn't appear especially serious or violent. No weapons were involved, Long Beach Deputy Chief Robert Luna said, and "we believe nobody was knocked to the ground."

Still, he said the cause of fifth-grader Joanna Ramos' death remains “undetermined,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Luna said Joanna returned to an afterschool program at Willard Elementary School following the confrontation but said she wasn't feeling well. Her family took her to the hospital where she later underwent emergency surgery, the Associated Press reported. Six hours after the fight, she was dead.

"She was crying and her head was hurting," Ramos' classmate Justin Robert King Jr told Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC-TV.

Police have not made any arrests, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported, though they have interviewed the other girl involved in the fight. Luna said about seven onlookers watched the altercation and they have been interviewed as well.

Authorities wouldn't say what sparked the fight, though students told the newspaper it was over a boy. Others said bullying is a problem at the school, but police wouldn't say whether Joanna had been a target.

"We are still trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together," Luna said.