A Louisiana teacher arrested after questioning her school district superintendent's pay raise won't be prosecuted, while the superintendent and his family have received death threats following the school board meeting incident that went viral on Tuesday.
Vermillion Parish School District middle school teacher Deyshia Hargrave was escorted out of the school board meeting on Monday after questioning the board's decision to approve a roughly $30,000 salary increase for school district superintendent Jerome Puyau. Once outside of the meeting room, video footage shows Hargrave on the floor being handcuffed by a school resource officer and later being put into a police vehicle.
Hargrave was arrested on charges of "remaining after being forbidden" and resisting an officer. However, Abbeville, La., attorney and prosecutor Ike Funderburk told news station KATC that he has reviewed video of the incident, and Hargrave will not be prosecuted.
The officer involved in Hargrave's arrest, Reginald Hilts, has been sued at least once before for excessive force, according to KATC.
In an interview for "NBC Nightly News," Hargrave said, "It's sad that a woman has to be forcibly, violently removed from a board meeting for people to start caring. And if that's what had to happen, well it happened. I'm hoping that people are not only outraged by it, but they follow through with that outrage and they do something, they stand up, they make a change, they speak out, they participate in democracy, they do those things."
Meanwhile, superintendent Puyau said he and his family have received death threats and hate mail since videos of the incident began to spread online. "I've stopped reading them [the threats] because they're just so bad and disgusting," Puyau said in an interview with the Associated Press.
The incident is being investigated by the National Education Association teachers' union and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has called Hargraves' arrest a violation of free speech.
