Tempers flared Wednesday afternoon at Madison Memorial High School as the mother and sisters of a detained teenager confronted school officials.
According to police public information officer Howard Payne, Memorial High personnel tasered 37-year-old Jacqueline Lightfoot after an 11:30 a.m. altercation at the school.
The disturbance began when Lightfoot's 17-year-old son, who is not a Memorial student, was ticketed for carrying tobacco on school property. As Educational Resource Officers were issuing the citation, Lightfoot made her way to the school to defend her son.
Once in the school office, she began to scream at an Educational Resource Officer, demanding the release of her son and employing a ""physical approach,"" police said. Then Lightfoot's daughters, both of whom are Memorial students, joined in the fracas. The girls, 14 and 15 respectively, teamed up with Lightfoot in surrounding the officer, and the three began shoving him.
The officer then shot Lightfoot with his taser, debilitating her and allowing him to arrest the three on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting an officer, police said.
""It is understandable that parents would be concerned about the welfare of their children,"" Payne said. ""But school officials and police would expect that parents would be appropriate in utilizing the correct mode of conflict resolution.""
Memorial High, 201 S. Gammon Rd., has been the scene of other violent incidents this year. In October, two students joined in stomping on the head of a 17-year-old classmate during a lunchroom dispute. On the same day, a fight at Madison LaFollette High School grew so rowdy that police arrived at the scene and arrested several female students.
Memorial principal Bruce Dahmen said the lunchroom altercation was ""highly unusual"" for the school, and insisted that the building is generally peaceful.
Two separate bomb scares in the last week and a gun threat last month have also shaken Madison East High, 2222 E. Washington Ave., and police were called to Madison West High, 30 Ash St., in October after several men shot at students with a BB gun.
