Delucca “Lucca” Rolle hasn’t returned to his freshman classes at J.P. Taravella High since a Broward Sheriff’s deputy slammed his head into the pavement on Thursday.
“Soon,” his mother, Clintina Rolle, said softly.
In an exclusive interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday, she and her son sat down to talk about the forceful arrest last week that sparked a national outcry. One deputy pepper-sprayed and punched the 15-year-old and another handcuffed him at a McDonald’s near his school.
A fight broke out at the after-school hangout on April 18, and the Sheriff’s deputies responding said they were outnumbered by more than 200 students — many of whom were yelling and threatening them. Cellphone video of Delucca Rolle’s arrest has spread across social media, and the Sheriff’s Office is investigating.
Delucca Rolle was treated for burning eyes after Tamarac Fire-Rescue took him to a hospital, a Broward Sheriff’s spokeswoman said Wednesday. His mother says his broken nose wasn’t treated until the next day after she picked him up at a juvenile detention center and took him to the hospital herself.
The aspiring football player doesn’t have much to say. “My nose hurts a bit,” he said.
He had “head injuries” and has since complained of headaches, his mother said.
She said a deputy called her to get permission for doctors to treat her son’s eyes at the hospital. “Where is my son? What happened?” she asked.
“Your son hit my partner,” she said she was told. She told the deputy it wasn’t possible.
With her son locked up overnight, she didn’t sleep and kept looking in his bedroom. “I was so depressed,” she said.
A resident of North Lauderdale, his mother reassigned him into the Coral Springs school to be in a “nice environment, a nice area.” He’s a starting safety on the Taravella junior varsity football team.
The teen initially faced three charges: trespassing, resisting an officer and assault on an officer.
That infuriates his lawyer, Ben Crump.
“The aftermath is almost worse than the crime,” said Crump, a nationally known civil rights attorney. “We know he didn’t hit anyone.”
The charges, he said, “were to justify outrageous brutality on an unarmed black child. If it wasn’t for the video he would have been convicted on these lies. Delucca Rolle would have been convicted.”
The two teens are black; the deputies seen in the video are white. Crump has represented families of black teens and men shot and killed by white police officers.
Prosecutors decided not to charge the teen this week. But his family and attorney vow they won’t stop until the State Attorney’s Office charges the deputies.
Sheriff Greg Tony has suspended two of them. A third who was at the site helped handcuff the teen but did not hit him, according to Sheriff’s officials, who have not released the deputy’s name. A fourth deputy whose name appears on an incident report said he assisted in medical treatment.
By the time deputies arrived at the McDonald’s on Pine Island Road, the fight between Taravella students was over, according to an arrest report. A student who had been told the day before not to return was there. They arrested that student and noticed Delucca Rolle going for the student’s phone which had fallen to the ground.
He “took an aggressive stance” toward a deputy, according to the report, “and began clenching his fists.” A deputy pepper sprayed him and forced him to the ground. The deputy wrote that he put his full weight on the teen and hit him with a closed fist.
“I am overwhelmed, depressed,” Clintina Rolle said. “I expect law enforcement to protect him.”
lhuriash@sunsentinel.com, 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash