Left: a man identified as Aaron Thomas confronts a student at a high school (Screengrab via theneighborhoodtalk/Instagram); Right: Aaron Thomas appears in a booking photo (Salem County Jail).
A New Jersey father is in a bevy of legal hot water after allegedly showing up at his daughter’s high school and aggressively confronting other students, authorities allege.
Aaron Thomas, 38, stands accused of two counts of making terroristic threats and one count each of simple assault, trespassing, and disorderly conduct, according to the Paulsboro Police Department.
A video of the confrontation was posted on Instagram and went viral.
The incident occurred on Monday at Paulsboro High School, authorities said. In the widely shared footage, an adult can be seen walking through a classroom and getting close to a student.
“Apologize to my daughter,” the man says over and over.
“You got a problem with my daughter?” the grown man asks the teenager. “Apologize to my daughter.”
The student replied that he didn’t have anything to apologize for.
“You heard what the f— I said,” the man says. “Apologize to my daughter.”
About a minute into the incident, another adult can be seen walking up to the man and patting him on the back in an apparent attempt to cool down the tension and get him to leave the classroom.
“If I gotta come up here again, I’m gonna slap fire on both of ya’ll,” he can be heard saying in the footage.
Later, he gets into a second confrontation with a different student. This time, the man identified as Thomas appears to actually make contact with the second student after being encouraged by the teen to come to blows by grabbing his arm.
According to an affidavit in the case obtained by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based ABC affiliate WPVI, Thomas originally came to the high school to sign his daughter out because she was having a problem with another student over sharing photos. The small Garden State borough is part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
Nearly three hours after the contretemps, the school called law enforcement. Thomas was arrested after he left the school and jailed later that day. He was released after a hearing on Tuesday, according to NJ Advance Media.
Under the terms of his bail, Thomas is not allowed to enter his daughter’s high school or contact the students involved in the confrontation or their families.
School officials took note of the in-school confrontation and the cellphone video posted on “social media platforms.”
“The Paulsboro Public School District in cooperation with the Paulsboro Police Department continues to investigate the incident and have communicated with all involved parties in accordance with district protocols,” the superintendent wrote in a letter obtained by WPVI. “Due to the ongoing nature of this investigation, additional details about the situation cannot be released to the public.”
Law&Crime contacted the Paulsboro Police Department for additional details about this story, but no response was immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
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