The Spring Valley High School resource officer who was caught on camera flipping a female student onto the ground and dragging her has been fired.
Deputy Ben Fields was initially suspended without pay after footage shot by a student at the South Carolina school on Monday circulated and received criticism for the way he handled the situation. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said that the deputy violated school regulations when he assaulted the girl.
The 16-year-old victim’s classmate, Niya Kenny, told CNN’s Don Lemon that after her math teacher told her to put away her phone and she refused, he then called Fields into the classroom. She said that when Fields asked her to leave the classroom and the student refused, he then took her laptop off the student’s desk, “grabbed her arm” and “put his arm around her neck.” Kenny recalled that the student was then seen attempting to hit the officer, and that was when he executed the shocking assault.
Although the student’s attorney, Todd Rutherford, stated that the student was injured and now wears a cast on her arm, sheriff’s department spokesman Lt. Curtis Wilson said her injuries were minute.
“To my knowledge, she wasn’t injured whatsoever,” Lott said. “She might have had a rug burn or something like that, but she was not injured.”
Federal investigators are now reviewing the incident.
