A Halifax provincial court judge has acquitted a teenage girl on charges of resisting arrest and assaulting police officers last November at Citadel High School.
Judge Anne S. Derrick said in her recent decision that La’Quoya Downey “cannot be convicted of resisting the officers or assaulting them as they were not, at that time, in the lawful execution of their duties.”
Downey, then in Grade 12, “was therefore entitled to use reasonable force,” Derrick writes.
Officers arrested her Nov. 10 after she “reacted angrily” to learning she was suspended.
“The police were dealing with an 18-year-old girl with an attitude,” Derrick says. “The police simply lost patience and decided they would remove her from the school by force.”
The document says Downey had been in a confrontation with another student Nov. 7. The school claims Downey was then suspended, but her mother says she never received a phone call. Derrick says the school failed to provide proper notice of the suspension.
