Following a baseball game between Lee Academy and Pee Dee Academy in Marion County, S.C., last week, a Lee Academy student-athlete was handcuffed and hit with a stun gun by a school resource officer. The community wants that officer to be held accountable for the incident as multiple witnesses claim the student “didn’t deserve” that treatment.
According to WPDE, the incident began when the mother of the student-athlete approached the umpire after the game. The school resource officer immediately stepped in, telling the woman “she couldn’t talk with the umpire.”
Witnesses said the officer was physically pushing the woman away, putting his hands on her face to turn her around.
At that time, the student-athlete approached his mother, the umpire and the officer to see what was going on. Witnesses said the boy “used a curse word” because he didn’t like the way the officer was treating his mother.
The officer reportedly said the student-athlete “isn’t going to talk to him that way,” before placing him under arrest. He then told the gathering crowd that the boy would “be okay, he just needed to have his mouth washed out.”
With one hand around the student-athlete's neck and another holding his stun gun to the boy, a crowd surrounded the officer. As the student-athlete struggled and stepped on the officer’s feet, the officer can be seen on video swinging his stun gun and smacking it into the student-athlete's head.
WMBF News reported that during the same incident, Austin Bowers, the student-athlete’s older brother, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. He can be seen in later video clips taken that night, at the edge of the frame, also in handcuffs.
Following the incident, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office told WOWT that the school resource officer has been reassigned and an investigation into the incident is underway with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
