A white sheriff’s deputy in South Carolina was fired Wednesday after county officials concluded he had acted improperly when, in a videotaped confrontation, he dragged and then threw a female African-American student across a high school classroom this week.

The deputy, Ben Fields, was dismissed two days after the episode at Spring Valley High School, where students recorded an encounter that spread quickly across social media and became a vivid reminder of concerns about the treatment of black people by law enforcement officers.

Image Ben Fields was videotaped flipping a student from her chair. Credit... Richland County Sheriff's Department

“He picked a student up, and he threw the student across the room; that is not a proper technique,” Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County said at a news conference in Columbia, where he told reporters, “Deputy Ben Fields did wrong this past Monday, so we’re taking responsibility for that.”