St. Louis MO ( KPLR ) -
Three Sumner High School students were taken to the hospital and as many as nine others were treated after school security officers used mace to break up a fight in the school cafeteria Tuesday.
It was around lunch time according to school system officials when about a dozen kids got into a brawl. School security responded. Officials say they warned the students to break it up several times before discharging mace on the combatants.
School system spokesman Patrick Wallace says only the people fighting were sprayed. But students who were there tell a different story. James Frazier, 18, says the guards also went after bystanders.
"The kids were trying to get involved and see who was fighting then they started spraying people for no reason, and I go sprayed in my throat and that stuff hurt," says Frazier.
Jasmine Cooper, 16, was also sprayed.
"They maced everybody and everybody rushed in the bathroom," she says. "Just a lot of kids in the bathroom trying to get it off their face."
Parents and other family members were arriving this afternoon to pick teens up, and, in many cases, they were incensed with what happened. Niakea Williams is the aunt of a student at Sumner.
"Just cause you're a security guard just you're looking over young adults they shouldn't do that to people's kids," she says. "They're still people's kids."
Octavia Sims rushed to school after receiving a phone call.
"I thought she was in a fight or something really bad, but the man said she was maced while they were macing somebody else," she says. She goes on to ask, "How do you do that? How do you do that?"
School officials say they will investigate what happened, but on the surface it appears the security officers acted within school guidelines. Further, they say the use of mace on students is not all that uncommon at Sumner.
It was around lunch time according to school system officials when about a dozen kids got into a brawl. School security responded. Officials say they warned the students to break it up several times before discharging mace on the combatants.
School system spokesman Patrick Wallace says only the people fighting were sprayed. But students who were there tell a different story. James Frazier, 18, says the guards also went after bystanders.
"The kids were trying to get involved and see who was fighting then they started spraying people for no reason, and I go sprayed in my throat and that stuff hurt," says Frazier.
Jasmine Cooper, 16, was also sprayed.
"They maced everybody and everybody rushed in the bathroom," she says. "Just a lot of kids in the bathroom trying to get it off their face."
Parents and other family members were arriving this afternoon to pick teens up, and, in many cases, they were incensed with what happened. Niakea Williams is the aunt of a student at Sumner.
"Just cause you're a security guard just you're looking over young adults they shouldn't do that to people's kids," she says. "They're still people's kids."
Octavia Sims rushed to school after receiving a phone call.
"I thought she was in a fight or something really bad, but the man said she was maced while they were macing somebody else," she says. She goes on to ask, "How do you do that? How do you do that?"
School officials say they will investigate what happened, but on the surface it appears the security officers acted within school guidelines. Further, they say the use of mace on students is not all that uncommon at Sumner.
