The man who refused to wear a mask was Reed Bender, who had reportedly attended meetings in the past and spoken against mask mandates. Bender would not put on a mask even though the district offered to provide him one. When Bender wouldn't comply, Superintendent Joe Graves called the police.

The Republic reported that Mitchell police officers arrived about 20 minutes later and attempted to speak with Bender to get him to wear a mask. Bender still refused, so the officers tried to physically remove him from the library where the meeting was being held.

Bender still wasn't ready to go without a fight and began resisting officers as other attendees urged him not to resist the officers, for fear of how the encounter might escalate. At one point during Bender's resistance, one officer pulled out his Taser, apparently on the verge of using it to subdue the uncooperative man.