A school girl has been arrested and sent to juvenile detention following an altercation with her resource officer in Kentucky over the school’s dress code.
On Aug. 23, Isabella Messer, 15, wore an oversize turquoise T-shirt to Hopkinsville High School with the message “Do my shoulders turn you on?” printed across the front, the Lexington Herald Leader reports.
On the back, the shirt read, “If so, return to the 1920’s.”
According to her mom, the incident happened following 15-year-old Messer’s suspension from school after they changed the dress code.
Isabella’s mother, Theresa Rucks, told the outlet that parents were not informed of changes to the dress code for the 2018-2019 school year prior to the start of classes. Rucks alleges that the new rules ban “exposed shoulders” and “see-through white clothes.”
With this, Messer protested the suspension by wearing the t-shirt, which her mom helped to make.
When she arrived at school wearing the shirt an assistant principal took issue with it and started arguing with Messer in the lobby. Messer refused to back down and a school resource officer was called to calm her down. The officer handcuffed Messer and tried to take away her phone, so she kicked him in the shin.
From Opposing Views:
Rucks, defending her daughter, told INSIDER, “She’s trained in self-defense,” and that her “instinct” is to raise her leg when someone advances towards her. She added that Isabella knows Taekwondo.
Rucks stated, “After they already had her in handcuffs, and she was sitting in a chair in the officer’s office in the school, they had realized she still had her phone, behind her back with the cuffs on. That’s when they came after her again. The first time they left red marks on her neck, her chest, her arms, everything. When they came at her a second time, she put her foot up to kind of stop him from coming after her again, and that’s where she got the assault on an officer [charge].”
She was taken to McCracken Juvenile Detention Center for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and third-degree assault and held there for five days before she was released under house arrest.
“She shouldn’t have been in any kind of trouble,” Rucks said. “Now it turned out to be where she’s in McCracken because the assistant principal did not like what her shirt had read.”
Rucks said she is considering legal action against the school and accused them of going “overboard” with their reaction to the incident.
“I feel like the school has gone overboard,” Rucks said, adding that Isabella had never been in trouble before this incident. “She’s such a good kid.”
Sources: OpposingViews, Insider, Lexington Herald Leader
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