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The Pleasanton Police Department arrested two juveniles at Pleasanton Middle School on Thursday afternoon after an altercation took place where one of them allegedly assaulted a parent who tried breaking up a fight in front of the school.
PPD Lt. Erik Silacci told the Weekly that police initially were responding to a reported battery involving two individuals who were in the dropoff/pickup area of PMS. He said that things escalated when the mother of one of them drove up to pick up her child.
“The mom was picking up the daughter, saw her involved in this altercation outside, so she tried to intervene and she started getting hit by a friend of one of the other parties,” Silacci said. “After people kind of broke them up … the two juveniles fled on foot.”
After making contact with the mother and daughter, Silacci said that officers found the two juveniles who fled on foot at a nearby residence. One was arrested on suspicion of felony assault and the other was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery.
Patrick Gannon, director of communications for the Pleasanton Unified School District, confirmed with the Weekly that the individual who was arrested for felony assault is not a PUSD student. He said the one who was arrested on misdemeanor battery was a PUSD student but did not attend PMS.
That PUSD student was the one who was involved in the initial altercation with the female PMS student, Gannon said.
“Principal (Marco) Lopez and his team are following up to provide support and create a safety plan for the Pleasanton Middle School student and family involved,” Gannon said. “School administration was present and worked to break up the altercation.”
The mom and the daughter both did not end up going to the hospital and said they could take care of any medical issues on their own, Silacci said.
As for the two who were arrested, Silacci said the one who was arrested for the felony assault was booked at juvenile hall while the one taken into custody for misdemeanor battery was later released because “we don’t book juveniles on misdemeanors generally just because of the way the juvenile system works.”
Gannon said that the PUSD student with the misdemeanor arrest was released to parent custody.
Silacci also said that PPD and PUSD are still in the early stages of investigating the incident and that both entities are working on figuring out everything that led up to the altercation.
Aside from everything that happened at PMS, Silacci provided clarification on a separate incident that happened at Harvest Park Middle School around the same time as the PMS incident on Thursday where PPD arrested a theft suspect. He said both cases were unrelated but did not have any more information on the theft suspect arrested at HPMS at the moment.
This latest after-school incident at PMS occurred almost one year later to the date when a PMS student was captured punching and stomping on the head of another student in front of the Pleasanton Public Library.