.
Florida Police Subdue 9-Year-Old Girl With Pepper Spray
Police in a Fort Myers, Fla., jail pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old girl in their custody after arresting and charging her with multiple felonies.
The trouble began Halloween day, on a school bus, when the driver told Amber Harris to stop eating the candy she’d carried on board. The fourth-grader refused, then allegedly attacked the driver, cursing and spitting at him. After leaving the bus, she was reportedly seen throwing chunks of asphalt in its direction from the road side.
Deputy Iris Sullivan soon arrived on the scene and tried to restrain the girl, who ran off toward a nearby yard, where she found an aluminum-frame lawn chair and hurled it at the officer, police said.
The official report also says the student was verbally abusive, shouting at the officer, “F*k you. Fk you. Shut the fk up… “I will fking kill you — if you don’t get the f*k out of here.”
The girl’s mother, Dawn Hoshor told local NBC-2 reporter Meaghan Smith that her daughter is schizophrenic and can become aggressive when she is without her medication. There was no indication as to whether the girl had taken her prescribed dose the day of the incident.
Sgt. Eller could not recall any similar incidents involving her young suspect, nor could she speak to reports about the girl’s mental state. “I saw the mother waving around some [medical] documents,” Eller recalled, but said her office had sought no official confirmation.
For now, Amber is serving three weeks’ home suspension from Fort Myers’ Royal Palm School.
9-Year-old Girl Arrested on Felony Charges
LEE COUNTY (NBC2 News) – Lee County deputies arrested a nine-year-old girl after they say she threw pieces of asphalt at a school bus and then threw a metal chair at a deputy.
The child, a fourth grader at the Royal Palm School in Fort Myers, was traveling home when the driver told her to stop eating candy on the bus. The girl “became very upset” and started yelling obscenities at driver Robert Middleton, according to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report.
Monday, just before 3:00 p.m., the Lee County Sheriff’s Office was called to help out after a student from the Royal Palm Exceptional Center had jumped off the school bus near the intersection of Kingston Drive East and Atlanta Avenue in Fort Myers.
Due to the nature of the incident, detectives with Youth Services and the Major Crimes Unit responded to the scene to investigate.
Amber Harris was booked into the Lee County Jail and charged as follows:
- Battery on a Public School Employee, in violation of F.S.S. 784.041 (2a)
- Throwing a deadly missile into an occupied vehicle in violation of F.S.S. 790.19
- Battery on a Law Enforcement Officer in violation of F.S.S. 784.07 (2b)
- Resisting with violence in violation of F.S.S. 843.01
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."