Two Seminole County teenagers are facing felony charges after police said they got in the middle of a fight on a bus between two other students and hit police officers in the process.
Their mother says they did nothing wrong.
A fight between two teenage boys broke out on the bus at the intersections of Hattaway Drive and Barclay Avenue Monday afternoon.
The bus driver pulled over and waited for police to arrive to help break up the fight, which was caught on tape.
Officers reported that once they got the boys off the bus, Janida Frierson and her sister, Kimberly Taylor-Harris, continued to incite the fight by banging on the windows.
An officer can be seen in the video confronting the girls.
“And of course you see it in the video where the two females were asked to calm down, sit down, again, verbally abusive, tensed up, hit the officer and the fight was on,” said Lt. Rob Pelton of the Altamonte Springs Police Department.
As the officer attempted to get control of Taylor-Harris, Frierson began punching him in the face.
Eventually, another officer comes to his aid and both girls are taken off the bus.
“You can clearly see they were just standing there, they are not doing anything at all. And he grabs her by her neck and put her in a chokehold, like she had done something very bad and she did not. There was no reason for that at all,” said the teens’ mother, Cynthia Taylor.
Pelton said the officers followed protocol in this case, and gained control of the situation without any students getting hurt.
“It’s scary. It’s scary that they will stand there and batter a law enforcement officer like that but the great thing I can say is 99.9 percent of those other students on the bus were law-abiding citizens,” Pelton said.
The girls are not allowed back at school.
They are facing charges of battery on a police officer and resisting with violence.
If convicted, they may face jail time.
The teenage boys in the initial fight are facing misdemeanor charges.
Watch the shocking surveillance video from inside the bus here.
Watch the entire interview with the mother here.
