Her family’s lawyer said the teenager was unconscious.
A Florida teenager seen in a viral video this week being beaten by a school resource officer was “traumatized” by the incident, her family said.
Taylor Bracey, 16, a student at Liberty High School in Kissimmee, is suffering from memory loss, headaches, blurred vision and lack of sleep, her mother told reporters at a news conference on Saturday.
“She is depressed, I am depressed. We are all traumatized by what happened,” said Jamesha Bracey outside the Osceola County Sheriff’s office, which employs Deputy Ethan Fournier, the school’s resource officer involved in the incident. “I think, if it were a white girl, would this have happened to the white child?”
According to civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who is representing the family, Taylor was knocked unconscious during the incident and suffered a concussion.
“He should be trained,” he said. “It is foreseeable that children will be able to get into altercations at school. You shouldn’t be making them unconscious. You should be the person who knows how to reduce the situation. It’s just stunning.”
“This is the adultization of black children – that our children are seen as adults,” he added. “No, no, that was a child.”
The incident occurred on Tuesday in the school corridor, when Fournier was trying to break up a fight between Taylor and another student, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
“The student was not complying with legal orders,” Sheriff Marcos Lopez said during a news conference on Wednesday.
On the day of the incident, Jamesha Bracey said that her daughter said there were “some girls wanting to jump in after school.”
In the video of the incident, after Taylor’s head audibly hits the concrete floor, Fournier can be seen handcuffed while the students look.
According to Crump, Fournier did not grant aid. Taylor received medical attention on the spot, said Lopez.
The sheriff’s office handed over a criminal investigation of the deputy to the Florida Police Department “to ensure that it is completely independent from our agency,” said Lopez. “We want to make sure it is a complete and thorough investigation, without my influence in this case.”
Fournier was placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. He has no history of misconduct, except minor material damage, said Lopez.
Fournier was also the women’s football coach at Liberty High and will not be the coach, pending the outcome of the investigation, Osceola’s school district confirmed to ABC News.
“It has been a difficult week for Liberty High students and staff,” Osceola school district spokeswoman Dana Schafer said in a statement to ABC News. “The entire staff and administration of Liberty High School remain committed to ensuring that we have a safe and positive learning environment for all students.”
The school district is cooperating with the investigation, she said.
School resource officers are not employees of the school district, but employees of their law enforcement agency, she added.
Community leaders who joined Taylor’s family on Saturday called to repeal a Florida law that requires at least one school resource officer at each school in the state.
They also asked that Fournier be fired and not work as a school resource officer elsewhere in the future, and that the investigation be led by a community task force, not the police, among other demands.
Taylor’s parents are considering sending their daughter back to school, said Crump.
“This will be a family decision, but think about it – are you going to send your daughter back to school that has a school resource officer who was supposed to protect her but hit her with the body and knocked her unconscious?” he said. “As a parent, do you feel confident sending your child back to that environment?”
Sabina Ghebremedhin, from ABC News, contributed to this report.