The incident involving a school employee took place Tuesday at Liberty High School in Kissimmee, Florida, according to the Osceola School District. A short video posted Tuesday and widely circulated online shows what appears to be an Osceola County Sheriff’s school employee confronting a student from the school.
School Resource Officers are not school district employees, but rather sworn sheriff deputies employed by their law enforcement agency, according to the district. The sheriff’s office has removed the resource officer involved in the incident from the school until the outcome of their investigation, district officer Dana Schafer said.
The video shows the deputy taking a student on the ground and putting her handcuffs on. Another deputy sheriff can be seen in the video as the incident unfolds. During a press conference on Wednesday, Osceola County Sheriff Marco Lopez said there are videos other than the partial ‘floating around’ and said, ‘That’s why I’m not going to give an opinion on what did or didn’t happen’.
While it is not clear from the short video what led to the incident, Lopez said the outage occurred at a school function where the student did not follow legal orders and ‘went after’ another student. Lopez said the situation escalated from there.
“In my opinion, the youngster was fine,” Lopez said, adding that the student received medical care on the spot and was released to her mother, who picked her up. According to the sheriff, the deputy sheriff is also “fine,” although he suffered some injuries when he hit the ground.
Lopez said his office is able to handle the investigation, but he has turned it over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) so no one can charge him with influencing the case.
“Certain situations and circumstances demand full, clear transparency and the greatest trust from our citizens,” said Lopez.
FDLE confirmed that it is investigating the use of violence at Liberty High School.
“Every case is unique, including this one. In this and all other cases, our role is to establish the facts of what happened, and a prosecutor or prosecutor will determine if there are any violations of the law,” said a statement the Ministry.
The deputy, who identified Sheriff Lopez as Ethan Fournier, has been with the sheriff’s office for ten years and has no history of misconduct other than minor property damage. The sheriff said Fournier has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
CNN has reached out to Fournier and the Florida Police Benevolent Association for comment.
“The district is fully cooperating with the active investigation of the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office into the situation,” Schafer, the information officer, said in a statement.
CNN’s Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.