Student Body-Slams Principal in Sacramento High School Fight

A student body-slammed the principal of Florin High School in Sacramento during a fight Monday that required police to arrest three students.

Footage of the fight was posted to YouTube and Facebook, and shows the principal, Don Ross, being lifted up and thrown to the ground during a vicious brawl.

Junior Dezhon Jackson told local KCRA News: “I see the principal get flipped…I just see a whole lot of ruckus. A lot of people were just crowding over getting on tables and yelling to fight–encouraging it.”

Principal Ross explained in a letter to parents, obtained by Fox 40, that there had been two separate fights. “School officials and law enforcement immediately responded to the incidents,” he reassured them.

Parents and teachers were shocked and outraged, according to reports in local media.

The incident had a racial tinge–albeit reversed from that of recent cases, such as the incident at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina, where a white officer slammed a black female student to the ground before arresting her.

Principal Ross is white; the student who threw him to the ground is black, according to the video.

Two of the students arrested are 15 years old, and the third is 13 years old, according to local Fox 40. Their names have not been released.

Elk Grove Unified School District spokesperson Xanthin Pinkerton told KCRA that “the good news is that particular situation was stabilized very quickly.” Students, however, said that many of their peers stayed away from school on Tuesday.

In a similar incident last year, Santa Monica High School reinstated a teacher who had wrestled a student to the ground during class. The school had placed the teacher on administrative leave when footage of the fight was posted to the Internet. But after a full investigation, and an outcry from students and parents, the teacher was vindicated.