South Carolina sheriff says third video shows student hitting school resource officer

Images from videos shot in a South Carolina high school classroom Monday.

(Image credit: Twitter.com/NBCNews)

last updated 28 October 2015

A third video has emerged showing a different angle of the confrontation between a school resource officer and female student on Monday in a South Carolina high school. Authorities say that in this tape, the student can be seen hitting the officer in the head after he touches her.

On Monday, two videos shot by other students in the Spring Valley High School classroom were released, showing Richland County Senior Sheriff Deputy Ben Fields flipping the student over in her desk and then dragging her away. Sheriff Leon Lott said when he first saw the videos, "I wanted to throw up. This makes you sick to your stomach when you see that initial video. But that's just a snapshot." Lott said the girl was in math class, sending text messages on her phone instead of doing classwork. The teacher notified an administrator, and the student refused to leave class. Ultimately, Fields was called in to handle the situation.

Lott said the department's internal investigation into whether Fields violated policy should be finished by tomorrow, NBC News reports, and he'll announce the officer's fate; late Monday evening, Fields was suspended without pay. The Justice Department and FBI also plan to open investigations into the incident. The student, who is black, was arrested, along with a second student for "contributing to the chaos." Lott said he does not think race was a factor in the incident, adding that Fields has been dating a black woman for "quite some time." "The student was wrong in what she did — she disrupted class, she was disturbing the other students from getting an education," Lott said. "But does her actions meet the level of what this officer did? That's what we're going to decide."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.