‘You don’t mace kids’: Police use pepper spray on high school football players during end-of-game handshake

ST. LOUIS (KSDK) – Football players from a Missouri high school were pepper sprayed by police at the end of a game against a school in Ohio.

Video captured police in Massillon, Ohio, using pepper spray on football players from Cardinal Ritter College Prep in St. Louis.

During the handshake line, after the game, is when it all went down.

The chief of the Massillon Police Department says after multiple fights pushing and shoving between both teams, officers were forced to intervene.

He says one of the home team’s player’s face mask was grabbed and he was surrounded and chased by Cardinal Ritter players.

After giving multiple orders for Cardinal Ritter to leave the field, he says two officers deployed pepper spray.

But parents of the Missouri players are expressing shock at the incident.

“Even if it was a fight, you don’t mace children,” mom Ashley Ashburn said.

She remembers getting a phone call from her 16-year-old son saying he was pepper sprayed at the game.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said. “Tell the kids to move, get off the field, it’s time to get off the field. You can even have an announcer announce something over the intercom or anything like that, or help the coaches get the kids off the field, but not to pull out mace and mace them, no, absolutely not.”

Cardinal Ritter’s president called it unacceptable.

“Neither the school where the game took place nor the school district have shown any interest in supporting an official investigation... We are working to file official complaints with the local police department,” the school’s president said.

The police department said it reviewed the incident and determined the officers’ actions were within the department’s policies and procedures.

Copyright 2025 KSDK via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.