MACON, Ga. — Earlier this week, a Laurens County woman posted on Facebook claiming a sheriff's deputy arrested her unlawfully after a disagreement with school officials.
Then, the sheriff took to Facebook to defend his deputy, so we set out to VERIFY if the viral post is true.
For the answer, 13WMAZ spoke to Laurens County School Superintendent Dan Brigman and Laurens County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Sheriff Stan Wright. We also obtained a video of the arrest through an open records request.
On Tuesday, a Facebook post from a woman named "Kitty Rochelle" alleged a Laurens County Deputy beat her up in front of her child while she was trying to register him for school back in September.
"We had a parent who was at the Laurens County school board registration facility, who became irate and verbally abusive," said Chief Deputy Stan Wright.
School officials say once she refused to leave, they called a Laurens County School resource officer. Officer corporal Keith Gillis says that's when Rhonda Smith started cursing.
"And as he went to place her under arrest, she physically fought him," Wright said.
A video released from the school board shows what happened, but did a Laurens County deputy really assault a parent?
"He used necessary force to subdue her and take her into custody and take her into the sheriff's office," Wright said.
Based on this video footage of the incident -- a deputy did not assault her. Wright says once Smith threw a slap, his deputy responded, but she resisted arrest.
"We are going to keep the peace and that's what the people of Laurens County expect from us and that is what we expect to give the people of Laurens County," Wright said.
A written statement from Laurens County Schools Superintendent Dan Brigman said:
This email is to confirm receipt of your request for information pertaining to an unfortunate situation that occurred at our Centralized Registration Facility last fall.
In reference to the incident, we expect all students, employees and visitors, including parents, to conduct themselves in a controlled manner on all of our campuses. The parent of concern was asked for the appropriate documentation needed to complete the student registration process. The parent immediately became verbally abusive to the staff, including the use of profanity in the presence of children and other visitors. The parent was asked three times to leave the campus but refused to follow this directive from the administration. A School Resource Officer was then requested from a neighboring school. Once the SRO arrived, this situation quickly turned violent as the parent refused to remove herself from the premises. As the parent started to walk out of the office area, she turned on the deputy and struck him in the face and upper body area, resulting in her arrest. This incident was captured on our internal security camera.
Again, this is a very unfortunate situation, particularly with the child of the parent present during the event.
Smith was charged with criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, felony obstruction and cruelty to children. Those charges are still pending.
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