DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — An elementary school teacher from Redan Elementary School is under scrutiny after exclusive video footage showed him slamming a 7-year-old boy against a wall.
The incident led the teacher to resign while under investigation.
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Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes was at Redan Elementary School, where the incident happened in March. The arrest warrant for teacher Anthony O’Bryant didn’t get filed until a month later. School administrators even let O’Bryant back in the classroom until they saw the video.
Fernandes spoke to the boy’s mother, Jasmine Clifton, who said she had just transferred her son to Redan three weeks before the incident. She said once she saw the video, it made her sick.
“I was heartbroken. Lke, I can’t watch the video again,” Clifton said. “Like I can’t see it again, to know that he was done that way and I wasn’t there to at least pick him up off the ground,” she said.
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When the incident happened, O’Bryant initially claimed he was trying to prevent Clifton’s son from hitting another student. Clifton wasn’t upset until she saw the video and spoke with O’Bryant, who apologized and said he lost his temper due to feeling overwhelmed by the number of students.
“They’re 1 to 30, so basically, they can’t handle the volume of kids that they have and he was aggravated,” Clifton said.
A spokesperson for the school district commented on the matter. “The teacher was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. While the investigation was underway, the teacher resigned,” the spokesperson said.
Police arrested O’Bryant and charged him with simple battery. He bonded out the next day.
Clifton said the charges weren’t enough.
“Simple battery was too light of a charge,” Clifton said. “That’s a 7-year-old child. I feel like he should definitely be charged with a felony and he should serve time.”
Clifton said her son suffered a head injury from the incident, and she’s upset that school administrators let the teacher back into the classroom the next day, without even viewing the video.
She also said they failed to tell the teacher that her son had been diagnosed with autism.
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