A video gone viral on Facebook shocked netizens as it showed a seven-year-old boy from Florida being arrested after he allegedly got into a fight with his teacher.
The footage was uploaded on Friday by Juan J. Alvarado, a friend of the child’s mother, Mercy Alvarez. In the video, the boy can be seen in handcuffs and being escorted by a policewoman, getting out of the car and into the police station.
It all started after the boy was brought out of the cafeteria in the Coral Way K-8 Center in Miami on Jan. 25 for playing with his food. According to a report by the school police, he “attacked the teacher by repeatedly punching her on her back, in the hallway,” local network WSVN reported.
He did not stop fighting the teacher even after they both fell to the ground, with the kid “grabbing her hair and pulling it towards him.” The boy had to be restrained twice, and he was brought to the principal’s office as soon as he calmed down.
After what she went through, the teacher said that she wanted to press charges against the child. The boy’s parents and the principal initially agreed that the child was supposed to be suspended for ten days.
An officer later informed Alvarez and the boy’s father Rolando Fuentes that their son would either be arrested or taken for psychiatric evaluation.
“Says he’s a danger to society. I said, ‘What? Seven years old? A danger to society?” Fuentes told WSVN.
Alvarez then said that when a psychologist checked their son, he was okay. She defended her son that the boy does not have a mental disorder, and called the arrest as “police abuse.”
“If my child wasn’t aggressive anymore when we got there, like they were saying he was before, why take such extreme measures,” Alvarez told in a separate interview to CBS News on Monday.
However, this was not the first time that the boy had trouble; he was previously reported for kicking a teacher in November, but the school had settled the issue.
Miami-Dade Schools Police chief Ian Moffett said in a statement that the boy’s arrest “was warranted to prevent his erratic and violent behavior from bringing further harm to others and to himself.”
“The manner in which he was transported to the receiving facility was done in accordance with standard operation procedures,” Moffett added.
The school police said they are further reviewing the incident. Katrina Hallare/JB
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