Footage has emerged of police officers tackling a Texas high school student because she wouldn't give up her cell phone.
Ixel Perez, 15, attends Sam Houston High School in Houston, Texas, which has a pretty stern anti-cell phone policy. Perez told KHOU that she was on the phone with her mother, who suffers from medical conditions. A teacher observed her using the phone in class last week, and instructed her to go out in the hallway. There, the school's assistant principal ordered her to turn in her phone, which Perez said she refused to do out of concern for her mother.
"She asked me for the phone and I didn't want to give it to her, because I was scared," she explained. "I ended up walking down the stairs trying to get away from the [assistant principal] and then she had already called the cops."
Campus police approached Perez, demanding that she give up the phone. When she refused, three of them subdued the 70-pound girl. "Both of the cops just tackled her down to the floor. They put her knee on her head and after that they just arrested her, took her phone," said Gustavo Lucio, a fellow student who captured video of the incident. "The cop just said you can't use your phone and after that, no words no nothing, just actions, grabbed her, threw her down."
Perez was briefly detained, and, as of last Wednesday, the school still expected her to pay the $15 fee to retrieve her phone. Her family says she's seeking to transfer, and school administrators say an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
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