Teacher Accused Of Hitting Student With Police Baton

A Riverside High School auto mechanics teacher is back in the classroom, despite hitting one of his students on the head with a metal police baton.

The teacher said it was an accident, while student hit by the baton said the teacher went too far. It seems to have started as a playful exchange – but in the end, no one’s laughing.

“I never thought I would get hit by a teacher,” Adrian Delgado said. Delgado is a junior at Eastwood High School, but takes the auto mechanics class through the vocational program at Riverside High School.

Delgado said the El Paso Police officer, who stopped by the shop to get an oil change, handed the teacher his expandable baton and started playing around with it in his classroom.

“Well, me not being dumb, I wasn’t going to let myself get hit, so as he went for it, I moved and when I moved, I moved the (car) starter too,” Delgado said. “He got mad at me called me dumb, and hit me over the head.”

Afterward, Delgado, who ended up with a bump on the head, said his teacher was very apologetic.

“The teacher comes up to me and says, ‘I’m sorry Adrian, are you OK? I didn’t mean to hit you. My brain was telling me not to hit you, but my body wanted to hit you,'” Delgado said.

Delgado places a lot of the blame on the police officer who let someone else handle not one – but two weapons.

“The teacher asked, ‘Can I see your taser?” to the cop, and I’m looking at the teacher and he has the taser and he’s going off with it, just having fun with it, but not pointing it at anybody,” Delgado said. “Teachers are to teach you. They’re not there to bully you and a cop shouldn’t be lending out his weapon.”