(CNN) — The Philadelphia Police Department said Monday evening the action of officer Richard Ross to remove the Philadelphia School District president’s son, Dominick, from their fraternity on the night of a Native American protest on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania has been misunderstood.
Dom’s video showing the frat’s president, Shaun Dunlap, ousting Dominick’s mother, Yolanda Renee Swan, from the event with Ross at the University of Pennsylvania was posted to Facebook and made international headlines. It went viral as public attention focused on attempts to quell the protest around Swan and Ross, who interceded to stop Swan from being berated by an unidentified person in the crowd.
“I’m not a racist person,” Ross told Fox News on Monday night, before apologizing to Swan’s family.
“I feel very bad for what happened in the party. My grandfather was in the military,” Ross told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum in his first live television interview since the incident.
The NBC10 interview was produced as a special, yet to air, segment titled “Rittenhouse 101,” which will air in the next few weeks, A EET producer told CNN Monday night.
“It is our hope that this informal poll will start a dialogue among viewers who have views and concerns about Rittenhouse, the city of Philadelphia and the police department,” said EET executive producer John Muszynski, who wanted to learn more about Rittenhouse’s history.
While critics condemned the apparent all-white delegation’s intrusion, Ross said on Fox that he was among a group of all-white men who were there to “compete” against the women and minority groups of Phi Gamma Delta.
Before the statement was released Monday evening, Ross had denied that he showed bias toward Swan. In an interview on Fox that aired on Sunday, he said: “She came back and grabbed me and I grabbed her back.”
For his part, Swan previously told CNN’s Don Lemon that Ross had been threatening to go after her. She and Ross’ baby were in the house when the incident happened, and Swan said she “didn’t have time to explain” to Ross why he shouldn’t be there.
“I was expecting that we would both walk away, but then he kept coming at me,” Swan said. “And so I took my baby and walked up the stairs and I stood there at the top of the stairs.”
Dominick Swan called the officer’s intervention “over the top.”
A Rittenhouse Police Department spokesman said during a press conference Monday that a patrol car was called to the frat on Sunday, but it was not because of the actions of the fraternity chapter president.
The spokesman confirmed that Ross did arrive with his gun drawn and forced Swan away from her baby in an apparent attempt to stop her from arguing with others in the house.
The University of Pennsylvania is investigating the incident, Fox reported.