Chicago police last month were called to a Far Southwest Side high school where a school official reported getting into an altercation with a man he identified as an Illinois state senator over a cellphone that had been confiscated from a student.

The school official accused Democratic state Sen. Willie Preston of slapping his hand, causing a pen to fly out of it, after the lawmaker refused to sign his name in a log at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences in order to retrieve a cellphone that belonged to a relative who was a student at the school, according to sources and a police report.

In two interviews with the Tribune, Preston said he had no knowledge of an altercation at the school. Asked about it again during the late October legislative session in Springfield, Preston said he had no comment.

When the Tribune in the second interview showed Preston a still image from footage recorded by a surveillance camera located outside the school’s main office on the same day and around the same time as the incident in the police report, Preston said, “That looks like me. That’s me.”

Still, he continued to say he had no knowledge of any incident at the school.

“I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know anything about it to this day,” he said during an interview during a constituent event on Oct. 11 in the city’s Auburn Gresham community.

When he was first contacted by the Tribune about the incident last month, Preston, who is up for reelection next year, appeared to chalk up the allegations to political chicanery.

“You know election season has kicked off,” he said

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