Watch: Parent Displays Pocketknife to Student During School Safety Meeting
A video has gone viral of a man wielding a closed pocketknife in front of a teenager during a PTA meeting at a high school on Wednesday, after the school suspended multiple students for peacefully protesting during National School Walkout Day.
Student Jo Herman, who attends Rocky Point High School in Long Island, New York, posted the video on Twitter. It shows a man in a heated discussion with a student during a PTA meeting on Wednesday.
“I protested peacefully this morning and got suspended. A man threatened a kid with a knife at a PTA meeting and got gently escorted from the school. Show me the logic,” Herman wrote.
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Newsweek has reached out for comment from Herman about the video, which already has more than 2.5 million views on Twitter and has been shared more than 30,000 times.
The student in the video is 17-year-old Jade Pinkenburg, a senior at the school. Pinkenburg told Newsday that the unknown man, who is a parent in the district, was addressing the board’s health and safety committee after Pinkenburg told board members there should not be armed guards in the high school.
The 17-year-old went back to his seat after making his comments but was called back to the front of the room by the man.
“I’m considerably larger than you, OK?” the man says, approaching Pinkenburg. “If something happened, if I decided to attack you, it would take the cops three to five minutes to come here—probably 10 if the traffic’s bad.”
He then pulls a knife from his pocket and challenges Pinkenburg, saying, “What are you gonna do now? What are you gonna do now?”
The student eventually backs away, and people in the audience begin to shout “Stop!” One person shouted that the man should be removed from the building.
“Everybody kind of freaked out. It was scary,” Pinkenburg told Newsday. “He brought a weapon to school, and it shocked everyone. No one knew who he was.”
The incident took place as thousands of high school students participated in National School Walkout Day to protest gun violence in schools in the wake of the school shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in which 17 people were killed.
Thirty students from Rocky Point High School participated in the national event despite the consequences of facing "administrative action" if they did get involved in the protest, according to local media.
Superintendent Michael Ring said in a statement on Thursday that the man was trying to make a point, but it “was ill conceived and inappropriate for the venue.”
“District personnel stopped the demonstration and members of our school security team removed the individual from the meeting. The district has contacted our dedicated Suffolk County Police Department School Resource Officer to report the incident," Ring wrote. “Please know that the safety and security of our students, staff and residents attending our meetings and other school functions is always of paramount concern.”