Teen suspended after tweeting provocative photo of classmate

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — A tweet by a high school sophomore has landed him a punishment of more than one week out of school.

He is accused of tweeting a provocative picture of a classmate.

The student told Channel 2's Eric Philips he feels he's the one getting treated unfairly.

"I understand that I shouldn't have tweeted this picture," Ajuan Hearn, 16, told Philips.

A female student posted a picture of herself on Hearn's Facebook page.

He then tweeted the picture, not realizing it would create a firestorm.

"It just basically had a life of its own after that a lot of people from other schools outside of Mountain View High School asked about it and it became a real big thing," Hearn said.

Hearn captioned the picture by saying, "This [expletive] Here you obviously want attention, everyone from Mountain View, see if you can identify this girl."

"She basically told me that she loved the attention she didn't care," Hearn said.

Gwinnett county school officials confirm that they called Hearn to the office and suspended him for 6 six days. Paperwork indicates a bullying violation.

"I understand that I shouldn't have tweeted this picture because now her and her family have to deal with it but I just don't think that It should have been blown out of proportion by the school as it was," Hearn said.

Hearn said he was not alone. He said a handful of others tweeted the same picture he did and that more than 100 others retweeted his message.

"You suspended him for six days, then you suspend everybody else who tweeted the picture," Ajuan's mother, Aisha Chapman, said.

But school officials said their investigation revealed Ajuan was the only one involved in this incident.

"I feel like it's a trap like it's not fair that people can put stuff out there like that. And then boys with their hormones racing say something about it and now he's the blame for the problem," Chapman said. "Six days of out of school suspension, it's too much, it's too much."

Philips asked Hearn if he thought what he did was wrong. Hearn simply answered, "Yes."

Hearn told Philips he didn't feel that he should have been punished for tweeting the picture.

WSBTV