A grieving Mississippi community is outraged after a visiting high school team’s halftime show portrayed students holding a SWAT team at gunpoint. It comes a week after two police officers in the town were killed while on duty.
The shockingly insensitive skit occurred when Forest Hill High School visited Brookhaven High School for a game on Friday night in the US state of Mississippi.
Images from the show surfacing on social media portray members of Forest Hill’s band dressed up as doctors and nurses while several of them are armed with toy guns.
Other students, dressed as police officers, lie on the ground facing their armed bandmates with their hands up.
While discussions in the US around guns in high schools and many shootings are polarizing topics at the best of times, residents of Brookhaven were especially outraged as the skit comes just days after the funerals of two police officers recently killed in the line of duty.
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Photos from the halftime show have been shared thousands of times on social media sites like Facebook, with thousands more expressing their shock and disgust at the stunt without any apparent desire for context.
Other, more level-headed observers have noted that the gaffe was probably more of an insensitive coincidence rather than an intentional mocking of a community.
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