Officer Pepper Sprays Squirrel At Mesquite School
MESQUITE (CBSDFW.COM) - Police in Mesquite are reviewing a case involving an officer who pepper sprayed a baby squirrel outside of Kimbrough Middle School. The incident happened Wednesday while several students watched in horror, and caught the situation on camera.
Video of the incident – posted here on YouTube – shows a man identified as Officer Davis standing over the squirrel and using pepper spray to subdue the baby animal. According to Sgt. Wes Talley of the Mesquite Police Department, the squirrel had been behaving erratically in the moments before what is shown in the video.
Police were concerned that the squirrel may have been rabid, and said that it chased down a few students before the pepper spray incident. Still, in the video, several shocked students can be heard screaming and pleading with the officer to show mercy on the animal.
A parent contacted CBS 11 News about this incident, saying that the officer and the school's principal both took part in "causing injury to a baby squirrel, who posed no harm to the students, by kicking and spraying it with mace."
The parent went on to say that the incident "caused some pain for these kids to see."
"These adults should not get away with using mace like that around all those kids for no reason," the upset parents told CBS 11 News. "The principal that kicked and injured this harmless animal should be ashamed of himself!"
Update: The squirrel is alive. School administrators called Mesquite Animal Control, and a technician picked it up and cleaned the pepper spray off of it before returning it to the wild.
