A North Carolina sheriff’s deputy pepper-sprayed a 16-year-old student in the face in front of a crowd of teenagers during a heated confrontation in a high school bus parking lot.
A shocking video shot at Seventy-First High School in Cumberland County by a bystander shows the boy and the cop shouting at each other and then getting into a scuffle.
The confrontation was apparently sparked by a fight between two female students outside the school.
The student got into an argument with the deputy after trying to intervene in the fight between the two girls as the deputy tried to break it up, according to a report by ABC11.
The student was pepper sprayed after getting in the officer’s face.
Frank Rivers, 16, got into an altercation with a Cumberland County, North Carolina sheriff’s deputy after the officer tried to break up a fight between two female students
The student was later charged with resisting a public officer and possession of marijuana.
The student has been identified as Frank Rivers, but there hasn’t been a name released yet for the officer who deployed the pepper spray.
Regarding the incident, the Cumberland County School District directed questions to the sheriff’s department, but did release a short statement.
Rivers got into the officer’s face after he, according to the sheriff’s office, ‘inserted himself into the situation’
‘Per the Feb. 6 incident at Seventy-First High School, there are consequences for our students’ actions that led up to the event per the Cumberland County Schools’ Student Code of Conduct,’ a spokeswoman for the school district said in the statement.
‘He (the student) felt it was a good idea to interject himself into what the officer was doing, trying to break up a fight,’ said Lt. Sean Swain of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department. Swain added that it is ‘department policy to use ‘intermittent’ weapons, such as pepper spray, when people resist officers as they try to do their jobs,’ according to a report by WNCN.
The 16-year-old student was pepper sprayed after getting into an altercation with the deputy following a fight between two female students
The student was charged with resisting a public officer and possession of marijuana following the on-camera incident