A San Antonio school officer caught on tape body-slamming a middle-school student was fired Monday by the district, which says the officer's misstatements about what happened were revealed by the video. Officer Joshua Kehm's statements on the March incident were "inconsistent" with the video and his response was "absolutely unwarranted," the San Antonio Independent School District says in a statement. Superintendent Pedro Martinez said Kehm's case has been referred to the Texas Rangers, the state law enforcement agency, for possible criminal charges. The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas will represent Kehm and plans to appeal his firing, the group's executive director, Charley Wilkison, said Monday.
"There's two sides to every story," Wilkison says. "We intend to fully, fully defend this officer and make sure that all of his rights are upheld." Martinez said in an interview that he didn't find out about the incident until seeing the video on the Internet, and that staff at Rhodes Middle School also face discipline for not immediately reporting what happened. The video shows Kehm struggling with the 12-year-old girl before body-slamming her to the ground. He then appears to handcuff the girl before having her stand and leading her away. She had been fighting with another girl before Kehm body-slammed her. Kehm first told the district that the girl's fall was accidental, then that she had been fighting an arrest in some way, Martinez says. (More Texas stories.)
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