LANCASTER - A Lancaster truancy officer is under arrest after a brawl on campus between him and a student at an alternative school.
News 8 has learned that the officer has had problems in the past and was even fired from the Dallas Police Department and his current job before.
Harold Cornish, 48, was processed at the Dallas County Jail Friday night. The officer, who also worked at DPD for 18 years, is on paid leave from the Lancaster Independent School District.
Zenas Dixon, 16, walked out of the hospital with an ice pack on his face, covering a cut to his eye. He also had a bruised neck and swelling to his lips from the alleged beating he took from the truancy officer.
"He had me in a choke," Dixon said. "He was holding the back of my head and the other arm was under my neck ... I couldn't even talk."
Dixon said Cornish punched him in the face and slammed his head against the ground following a dispute in the cafeteria at J.D Hall Learning Center. Dixon claimed he was attacked because he ate someone else's food.
"He was strangling me like he wanted to kill me," he said. "... He was like, 'You're going to sleep.' He was like, 'Call your daddy he, can get it too."
"He's lucky I didn't come when my son called me," said Spencer Dixon, Zenas' father. "We would both be in big trouble. I can't believe he did that to my son."
According to Dallas Morning News archives, Cornish has been fired four times from police jobs starting in 1988. Dallas police fired him for alleged sexual comments to a female jail employee. He won his appeal and got his job back and was then fired again in 1989 for insubordination. He won another appeal and was let go again by the DPD in 1998 for a physical altercation.
in 2003, Lancaster ISD hired and fired him. Finally, in 2005, the school district had to hire him again after Cornish won a legal settlement against the the district.
"They should have checked his background more thoroughly to find out why was this person fired three times from the same department," said Sonia Dixon, Zenas' mother. "There's something wrong there."
According to the newspaper archives, Cornish was cleared of all criminal charges stemming from his multiple allegations when he was with the DPD.
The student was at the school on a 30-day suspension.
