A North Carolina high schooler was hit with felony charges for allegedly attacking two separate school teachers on school grounds — and is being charged as an adult, prosecutors said.
Aquavis Hickman, 17, a student at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, was indicted on assault and kidnapping charges last week and charged as a grownup in the two horrific attacks, including an April 15 assault where he slapped a female teacher twice, Fox affiliate WGHP-TV News reported.
“Our message to our community is simple,” Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill told the outlet. “We stand with teachers. We will fight to protect those teachers. And if you lay a hand on a teacher and assault a teacher, you can expect that the punishment will be swift and severe.
“Promise made,” O’Neill said as he announced the indictment Thursday. “Promise kept.”
In the first incident, Hickman was charged with second-degree kidnapping and misdemeanor riot in a Feb. 1 attack on a male teacher at the school — although prosecutors said he did not act alone.
Larry Edwards, a retired educator who was working as a substitute teacher, told WGHP he “was appalled” after having his head pushed in the hallway, allegedly by Hickman and other students.
“I walked up to the desk to get my phone to call the office and he mockingly walked behind me, and I happened to turn around and see him and the students started laughing,” Edwards said in a report last week. “The next thing I know he had taken his hand and smushed my head and everybody started laughing and he ran out.”
Last month, prosecutors said the rowdy teen walked up to the female teacher and smacked her twice, with the attack caught on video that later went viral — although it was not released by cops.
“That video went viral nationwide and it put us on the map in a negative manner,” Winston-Salem Police Chief William Penn told the outlet. “I am so glad today that the rest of the nation will also hear that we do not tolerate that in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.”
The case against the teen was transferred from juvenile court to Superior Court last week, where a grand jury voted to indict him.
School district officials declined to comment on the case or Hickman’s arrest.
