Nearly 20 students at Jack Robey Junior High School in Pine Bluff, Ark. were injured last Thursday when a police officer used pepper spray to clear them from a hallway.

This week, police are meeting with school officials to determine what action to take against the officer who sprayed the students, the Associated Press reports.

Student Faith Forney told KLRT-TV in Little Rock that she and her classmates were left gagging and vomiting in the hall after the officer used the spray to move them into classrooms.

"Not knowing he was going to spray it I walked straight into it," Forney told the station. "Everybody started hollering and we had people just gagging and throwing up and everything and I'm like what's going on? You could have at least said something about keep it moving. But spraying mace? He took it too far with that."

Forney was rushed to the emergency room along with two of her classmates. Meanwhile, 17 other students were picked up by parents after they experienced difficulty breathing, according to the Pine Bluff Commercial.

Carolyn Brown, the mother of a 13-year-old student at the school, told the paper that she was called in to pick up her daughter and heard conflicting reports about the incident.

"They told me the police officer sprayed Mace in the air because the kids were moving too slow," Brown said. "I've heard so many stories, including that there was a fight but there was no fight because if there had been, they would have taken kids to jail."

Pine Bluff police spokesman Lt. Bob Rawlinson told The Associated Press that they are investigating the situation within the police department and will not be issuing a press release about the incident.