A 15-year-old Louisiana high schooler was charged with a hate crime after video showed him throwing cotton balls at a Black student before whipping him with a belt.
The white teenager, who has not been named, faces simple battery and hate crime charges for the March 9 incident in the cafeteria of Vandebilt Catholic High School in Houma.
Video taken by another student and posted to social media shows the white teen, a ninth grader, throwing cotton balls at the Black student, who is sitting at a table in a crowded cafeteria. The white student then strikes the Black student four times with what appears to be a small belt, The New York Times reported. The Black student then jumps up from his seat and pushes the other student away.
Police investigated the video and arrested the white student, who was then booked into the Terrebonne Parish juvenile detention center, Sheriff Tim Soignet said in a press release.
“I’m very pleased that the school took a front stand on this,” Soignet said Wednesday, according to USA Today. “When we received the complaint, we immediately put our detectives on it. They worked through the weekend so we could get to this point and effect an arrest on that juvenile.”