A school resource officer is under investigation after being accused of dragging a substitute teacher down the hallway by her throat at Eagle’s Landing High School in Henry County, Georgia.
Nia King, 22, says two students were getting ready to fight, and she tried to intervene to prevent it from escalating, according to WSB-TV 2 in Atlanta. King says she backed away when the two students started fighting, and that is when the resource officer grabbed her by the neck.
The officer reportedly then proceeded to drag her down the hallway into the office. The incident was caught on camera by students recording the fight.
“Once we pushed down the hall, I got trampled from the left to the right of the hall, and now I’m back into the middle of the fight. As I was back in the middle of the fight, the SRO just grabs me by the neck, and the fight is still continuing to go on, and she dragged me all the way from the middle of the hall towards her office,” King told WSB-TV.
King continued by saying the officer did offer her aid when they reached the office but gave no initial explanation as to why she was dragged down the hall by her throat.
“She asked me do I need EMS, do I need the nurse, and do I need some water. I just told her I just need you to leave because you just drug me from that point to this point, and I couldn’t breathe, but you wouldn’t talk,” said King. “She stepped out, and then she came back in and told me ‘Oh, I was trying to save you. I was trying to save you because they say you got hit.’ “
King and her father explained to local media that they weren’t buying the excuse that the officer was trying to save her.
“The officer’s hand was around her neck, and this is what was in the footage that we saw. Is that a position of somebody being saved? ” asked King’s father while demonstrating a chokehold.
King added that she has been a substitute at the school nearly every day since September. She also said that she has been mistaken for a student before but had met the officer involved several times.
“We are still in the process right now of obtaining, gathering information, and reviewing to make sure the investigation is done …. We are working in conjunction with the school,” said Henry County Police Captain Randy Lee.
Lee also said that their training division does not teach chokeholds or neck restraints, but they do apply those tactics if deadly force is justified or warranted.
“No student, teacher, or anybody should be treated like that,” said King.
“There is a pending investigation into this matter. No further information is available at this time,” said Henry County Schools in a statement emailed to WSB-TV.
