Mom caught on video hitting son with belt at a Texas school is arrested, police say

A Texas mom caught on video whipping her son with a belt at school and making him apologize to a teacher has been arrested, police said.

Brittanie Thomas was charged with injury to a child, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

Thomas is the mother accused of hitting her 7-year-old son at Homer Elementary School in Beaumont, Texas, in November after she learned he was in trouble with a teacher, KFDM reported. A video of the incident was uploaded on Facebook and viewed hundreds of thousands of times, McClatchy News reported.

On Thursday, Thomas was arrested in court during a status hearing with child protective services regarding placement of her children, the Beaumont Enterprise reported. During the hearing, which she wasn’t allowed to attend, Thomas was heard screaming and hitting objects in a room behind the courtroom, the newspaper reported.

According to an indictment obtained by KBMT, the charge against Thomas, 30, is a third-degree felony for striking the child “with a belt or the defendant’s hand.”

During a court hearing last month, Thomas told a judge she didn’t want her son to be a “black man dead on the streets,” KFDM reported.

“I have to be my son’s mom, his father,” she said, according to KFDM. “What you saw that day was me being his father.”