The Latest: Cheerleader coach fired over splits practice

DENVER (AP) — The Latest on videos showing high school cheerleaders in Denver forced into doing splits (all times local):

6:35 p.m.

A Colorado high school cheerleading coach has been fired amid videos showing him pushing cheerleaders down in splits.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg said Ozell Williams was dismissed Friday from his job at East High School.

Four other school district employees have been suspended, and police have opened a child abuse investigation.

Williams told The Denver Post the videos were taken out of context but couldn’t yet talk about what happened.

Boasberg also said the district has hired a law firm to investigate how officials at the school and the district level handled the incident.

The superintendent said East High School officials learned of the incident in June and should have taken “certain actions” then. He didn’t say what those actions should have been.

Boasberg said he personally didn’t learn of the incident until this week.

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2:10 p.m.

A coach shown pushing cheerleaders down in splits on video in Denver was fired from another Colorado high school last year because of concerns about his techniques.

Ozell Williams is among five school workers who were placed on leave after the videos were made public and police opened an investigation.

Williams worked with cheerleaders at Boulder High School in 2015 and 2016. The district says he was dismissed from last summer’s camp after a coach saw him using a technique similar to that seen in the Denver videos , which were obtained by KUSA-TV.

Administrators say they didn’t learn about the problem until news of the videos broke this week.

Williams told The Denver Post that the videos were taken out of context but couldn’t say talk about what happened yet.