Katerena Lovett recalled it was a special morning before her grandson was taken down by a Federal Way police officer and arrested in a Federal Way High School hallway.

“That was the very first day Angel got his ID,” Lovett said of then-16-year-old Angel Lovett, who is her grandson that she adopted.

The two spent the morning of March 5 going back and forth between the Department of Social and Health Services office and the Department of Licensing. Fifty-four dollars for a driver’s license was too much when she could get it for $5 on a disability voucher.

But the day would soon take a turn for the worse.

“I dropped him off and about 45 minutes later I get a phone call,” Lovett said.

It was from Federal Way police officer Kelly W. Smith. Angel was arrested on suspicion of a stolen backpack and was being transported to a juvenile detention center in Seattle.

Frantic, she called the school and discovered not only was he facing immediate expulsion but that he had allegedly assaulted a police officer.

“I said no, my son wouldn’t do that,” said Lovett, who has challenged the school district over her grandson’s expulsion for six months and believes the police officer used excessive force against him. “He wants to be a police officer.”

According to a Federal Way police report, at around 11:18 a.m., Smith, the school resource officer of Federal Way High School, was informed over the high school radio that several staff members were looking for Angel.

He had supposedly threatened to “swing” at David McColgan, the 10th and 11th grade Dean of Students administrative intern at the time.

In a written statement that the Mirror obtained through a public records request, McColgan wrote that he saw Angel walk into the school cafeteria carrying two backpacks and shortly after was told by then-interim principal Chad Littrell that a student’s backpack was stolen during lunch.

McColgan followed Angel into the gym where he was playing basketball and “discretely” asked him why he had two backpacks. McColgan wrote that Angel ignored the question and a few minutes later he abruptly left, angry.

“He then returned to the gym to grab his backpacks and refused to comply with requests to stop,” McColgan’s statement said. “At that time he told me, ‘Back up off me N***** or I am going to swing on you.’”

McColgan said he thought Angel might hit him as he walked back toward the cafeteria.

Soon, several staff members and the officer followed Angel quickly down the hallway.

But the former football player from California ignored the commands and it got physical.

The officer tried to put him in an escort hold when he refused to stop, the police report states.

“As soon as I grabbed him, he attempted to swing his left elbow at me backwards, nearly impacting me in my face and yelled, ‘Don’t f****** touch me.’ I could immediately tell that he was very agitated — muscles tense and clenched fists,” Smith wrote in his account.

While administration focused on keeping curious students at bay, the two struggled to gain control and a physical fight ensued, which would last for about six minutes and 30 seconds, according to the school’s video footage.

“Believing that Angel was going to overpower me, I applied a strike to his groin to get him to comply,” Smith continued. “We then struggled towards room 611 in the ‘600’ hallway and I was finally able to get him on the ground.”

Smith said his right arm was locked when they fell to the floor. His arm “overextended on Angel’s baggy sweatshirt as it slid” between the teenager’s abdomen and the officer’s body weight.

“I felt extreme pain shoot into my right shoulder,” he wrote.

The officer eventually got Angel on his stomach and put him in handcuffs.

Smith pressed his emergency activation button during the altercation and soon officers rushed to Smith’s aid.

A police investigation later revealed the second backpack was indeed Angel’s but a search conducted on the backpacks turned up a small folding knife, which was taken as evidence.

Police recommended prosecutors charge him with third-degree assault against a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Smith went to the St. Francis Hospital emergency room for his shoulder pain and was referred to an orthopedic specialist, according to the police report. He was later put on several months of leave as the result of his injury.

On Sept. 11, Angel went to juvenile court where he signed a plea bargain to lesser charges — fourth-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and intimidating a school official. If he stays out of trouble for six months, the charges could be expunged from his record.

At this time, Angel is still expelled from Federal Way Public Schools.

“We take this situation seriously and have worked cooperatively with the police department during their investigation,” said Federal Way Public Schools spokeswoman Debra Stenberg, adding that she couldn’t provide further information.

A rocky road

A Des Moines resident currently battling ovarian and breast cancer, Lovett has fought for her son’s innocence since day one.

She believes Angel was unfairly racially targeted when staff assumed he stole the backpack.

Angel was carrying two backpacks that day because he works out after school at LA Fitness and she can’t afford to give him a nice duffel bag, she said.

And because he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, bi-polar disorder and manic depression, Lovett believes school staff should have known to give him space in high-anxiety situations, as it’s written in his personal report, she said.

“What really made me stand so hard on this case was one day my son came up to me and said I’ll never get into the military,” she said. “He went through a violent childhood. [His parent] was a crackhead, dope addict, went to my home. I got sick, went to other homes. He was abused, sexually abused — went through hell.”

Lovett said Angel feared a third-degree assault charge against a police officer would stay on his permanent records and affect the rest of his life.

“He said to me, ‘Mom, what if I disappear?” she said on the brink of tears in an interview. “I said, ‘You can’t go away, they’ll find you’ and he said, ‘What if I committed suicide?’ That bothered me a lot because I know he was being targeted for something he hadn’t done.”

Lovett attended a hearing with school district officials regarding Angel’s expulsion on May 28 and later appealed it to the school board on Sept. 24. She’s currently waiting for the results of the most recent hearing.

She said the first hearing was “six grueling hours” of different stories and back-and-forth allegations.

She questioned the severity of Smith’s shoulder injury and why he wasn’t at the hearing.

“I tore my shoulder one day. My arm went down and it stayed down until I had surgery,” she said. “Why isn’t the officer here? He’s on pain medication. I have cancer, I’m on pain medication too but I’m here. He wouldn’t come.”

The school received an email from Lt. Connie Shupp on May 23 indicating Smith couldn’t attend the hearing because he was recovering from shoulder surgery.

“I have no doubt that his injury was serious,” said Chief of Police Andy Hwang, noting there are doctors’ reports corroborating his injury. “When you do get hurt, we train our officers to fight through the pain because if he doesn’t, it could be much more serious.”

Citing several court cases, the hearing officer excused Smith from testifying in person but didn’t excuse officers Joseph Meshkoff or Josh McConnell. But because school district officials didn’t have fiscal and administrative resources to give the witnesses a subpoena, they didn’t request they attend the hearing.

Detective Maddie Morikawa, McColgen, Littrell and Larry Thornton, the school’s discipline specialist, did, however, testify.

Lovett questioned whether Angel really threatened McColgan because Littrell supposedly didn’t hear the threat but he heard McColgan’s direction to call 911. She alleged discrepancies in McColgan’s account of what happened and stated she believes Thornton’s statements that the officer didn’t use excessive force were made because he was intimidated, as he was the “only black guy” in the hearing room.

But because the officer struck Angel’s groin, Lovett believes it qualifies as excessive force. And saying Angel assaulted Smith is wrong because the officer hurt his shoulder by slipping on a sweatshirt, she said.

However, when she received the hearing decision, she was surprised to learn that the judge allegedly didn’t believe Angel was kneed in the groin, and that the officer used his leg to balance himself.

“How could you say you don’t think he [kneed him in the groin] when the officer said he groined him?” Lovett said. “The officer charged my son with assaulting him … and that’s how he hurt his arm but there’s two discrepancies there and a big one for L&I (Labor and Industries).”

Lovett said because the officer said he struck Angel in his groin and said he hurt his arm by his own doing (slipping on Angel’s sweatshirt), Angel should not have been initially charged with third-degree assault against an officer — a crime that would prevent him from being accepted in the Army.

“We talked to the recruiter and he said don’t plead guilty,” she said before Angel entered the plea bargain to lesser charges. “It would hold him back from going to the Army.”

The Federal Way Police Department conducted a use of force review, corroborating the officer’s actions.

The document indicates Angel refused to comply with verbal orders, attempted to strike the officer with his elbow, all while the initial physical force was ineffective and there was no additional officers on scene.

It also stated Angel was a potential danger because he was reported to have harmed others and attempted to flee on foot. Factors, such as that the officer sustained an injury and Angel’s muscular build, were also taken into consideration.

The force used to control Angel, written in the report, was “physical strength and a strike or punch.”

According to the use of force review, Angel complained of pain but refused medical care when offered. Smith did use a single knee strike to the groin during the fight and it was effective, the review continues.

Smith also complained of extreme pain to his right shoulder.

“We strive to deliver police services as efficiently and unobtrusively as possible with minimal reliance upon the use of physical force,” Hwang wrote in an email. “In this incident, the officer’s decision to respond with force to bring the incident under control was reasonable and necessary. The actions of this young man caused a significant concern and disruption for school staff, and he continued to use poor judgment not to cooperate with the officer — his decision to physically resist resulted in the officer sustaining a serious injury, requiring him to be absent from work several months.”

Hwang said Angel is a pretty big kid and Smith was clearly mismatched in terms of strength.

“In my opinion, were the officer’s actions appropriate?” he said in an interview. “Absolutely yes.”

School administrators made reasonable attempts to control the situation without force by following him around the school, he said.

“This thing could have escalated with serious consequences,” Hwang said. “The only person that sustained an injury was the officer. Other students could have been injured.

“I just believe officer Kelly is an outstanding officer, he made the request to be a school resource officer at Federal Way because he wanted to work with young students, to be a mentor to young students. I support 100 percent the actions he did that day.”

It’s thanks to Smith that Angel got off on reduced assault charges with a deferred disposition, Hwang noted.

“I just thought it spoke to the character of the officer to give this young man an opportunity to have this purged from his records,” Hwang said.

Lovett doesn’t buy it.

“I’m tired of police just doing what they want to do and lying,” she said, noting she’s published 34 books on Amazon about social issues, including the book “Steps to Restoring and Changing the Public Trust and Communications in Seattle and Surrounding Police Departments: Making Changes to See Changes Made.” “I’m going to add one more section for African Americans: don’t approach them the way that you think because they look stereotypical, because he said my son looks suspicious. Again?”

The past

Angel had never been arrested prior to this incident but he does have a history of getting in trouble with school officials.

He was assigned to detention earlier last school year for skipping class and received seven disciplinary referrals over the past two years when he attended school out of state.

The referrals involve “lewd and inappropriate behavior, threatening behavior, sexual behavior, truancy and assault upon a school employee,” according to the district hearing examiner’s investigation in the expulsion appeal.

His last grade report indicated he had at least three Fs.

Lovett said her grandson has been accused of stealing a cell phone and “searched down to naked” for nothing and accused of sexual assault, an unfounded accusation that came from a girl who “liked him a lot” and was upset when he broke up with her.

She assumes Angel reacted the way he did toward Federal Way High School administration that day because he was sick of being wrongly accused.

She thinks the school district needs to inspect Smith’s background.

“Did you know officer Kelly Smith was relieved of duty and put on administrative leave because he shot a guy with a butter knife seven times?” she said.

There’s currently an active civil lawsuit that Federal Way resident Jonathan Dasho initiated against the city of Federal Way, Smith and officer Steven Wortman. Dasho is seeking damages from excessive use of force by the two officers after they fired 10 bullets into his body in 2009.

“He lived, surprisingly,” Lovett said. “But when I contacted the guy on Facebook, he said ‘No, I’m too scared of Kelly. I’m not going to testify.’”

Smith and Wortman were called to an apartment fight between two men on Aug. 19, 2009 but were allegedly told the fight was over when they arrived, according to U.S. District Court documents.

The officers went to the apartment unit where the men had returned and looked through the window where they saw Dasho, lying on the floor naked.

According to the complaint documents, the officers told Dasho to get up off the floor and threatened to break the door in but he was unresponsive. Another person at the residence eventually opened the door and the officers allegedly rushed inside wearing black jumpsuits, armed with firearms and Tasers. Documents state Dasho “woke up in a disoriented state and ran to the kitchen where he rummaged in a drawer and came out with a dull table or butter knife.”

As he exited the kitchen, the officers stood with guns drawn and “immediately fired their semi-automatic weapons,” the documents continue. Dasho claims Smith and Wortman continued firing as he dropped the knife and retreated away from them.

A witness account, as well as Hwang, said Dasho allegedly came at the officers with the butter knife held over his head, pointing as though he was going to stab them.

Court documents state the officers delayed medical aid as they rolled Dasho from his stomach to his back, initiated multiple searches of his naked, injured body and attempted to handcuff him. He alleges they also took pictures of him lying on the floor, bleeding.

“When leaving the scene, officer Wortman advised officer Smith to keep his mouth shut about what happened during the shooting,” the documents state.

When asked whether the type of knife was an issue in this case, Hwang said, “I don’t think it matters. You can be seriously injured or even killed with a butter knife.”

“This is an old case and the city is going to vigorously defend our actions,” Hwang said. “Mr. Dasho was convicted of two counts of [third-degree] assault on police officers. Since then, he’s brought a claim against the city and we’re working toward having it dismissed.”

Hwang said he and the city stand “absolutely behind the actions of the officers” and reiterated that Smith has yet to have any excessive use force claim sustained.

The Kent Police Department acted as the third party to investigate the use of force review in the Dasho case. Police documents indicate neither Wortman or Smith received discipline.

In 2007, the Federal Way Police Department received a complaint about Smith, stating he made inappropriate comments toward a man during a traffic collisions response, according to police documents.

Smith took responsibility for his actions and was given counseling, according to the complaint.

“Officer Smith is an outstanding police officer and he’s an excellent role model for our students,” Hwang said. “I have had no complaints from school officials.”

He added Smith has resumed his position as the school resource officer of Federal Way High School.

“The judge said he feels like this case was wrong,” Lovett said. “Everything that happened here could have been avoided.”

Neither Angel nor Smith would speak to the Mirror about this investigation.