She witnessed an arrest. She was handcuffed in a squad car. She spent a night in jail. She nearly lost her job.

Now, two months later, an obstruction charge against Washburn High School teacher Crystal Spring has been dropped due to a lack of evidence.

"She's very happy and relieved," said attorney Jordan Kushner, who said the Minneapolis city attorney's office notified him of the decision on Friday.

Spring, 31, was arrested May 19 in south Minneapolis. She was driving home about 10 p.m., she said, when she saw two police officers arresting a black man on the side of the road. The man was yelling. Spring pulled her car over.

"I just pulled over to observe and just bear witness to the experience," she said. "I basically continued to watch, and ended up being arrested and spending the night in jail."

Spring was charged with obstructing the legal process. When school officials learned what had happened, they made plans to fire her. But community pushback — including plans for a rally at a school board meeting — helped the theater teacher and creator of Washburn's Black Box Theatre program keep her job.

Spring said she's grateful for an outpouring of support, which she said deserves part of the credit for how the case has been resolved.

And even after what's happened in the past two months, she said, if faced with the same situation, she would do it again.

"I'm thinking a lot about how this is interwoven with everything that's going on right now, and also that, being a white person, I have skin privilege and am able to observe these interactions and have a lot less happen to me than being murdered or being brutalized," she said. "That's at the forefront of my mind right now."

Emma Nelson • 612-673-4509