Teacher who pushed elementary school student in Snapchat video was in 'self-defense mode'

A teacher arrested for terrorizing and pushing a student on a Snapchat video tells Yahoo Lifestyle he was in “self-defense mode.” As reported by Arkansas news station KTVE, Snapchat footage pictured Andre Fuller, a substitute teacher at East Ouachita Middle School in Monroe, Louisiana, towering over a student who sat at a desk. “Get out of my ear. Go sit down, please,” the student told Fuller.

“Do not say that no more,” Fuller told the student, who stood to get away from the teacher.

The child backed away from Fuller, who followed him around the room screaming, “What are you going to do? Why are you doing that? Who are you yelling at?”

Fuller unceasingly pushed the child until he was backed against a window. “Who are you yelling at, boy?” he bellowed, pushing his body flush against the student. “I’m a man! Don’t yell at me. Now you sit your butt down and be quiet today. Do you understand me?”

Fuller tells Yahoo Lifestyle that the boy had been sent to his classroom for disciplinary issues, where was supposed to complete his schoolwork. “It was the student’s third day in my classroom and the third time he had threatened to hit me with a chair,” says the 50-year-old teacher.

“He refused to do his work and he was getting more aggressive, calling me a bald-headed motherf*****,” Fuller tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I knew that if I gave him physical space, he would have thrown the chair. He was a threat to me and the other students. I was in self-defense mode.”

Fuller is embarrassed by the video and any discredit to his reputation as an educator. He won’t be returning to Ouachita Middle School.

In an offense report sent to Yahoo Lifestyle by the Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office, principal Keshea Jones and assistant principal John Merritt resisted filing criminal charges, only requesting that Fuller be escorted off school property. Yahoo Lifestyle could not reach the parents of the student for comment.

Ouachita parents Christina and Melvin Hamilton told KTVE that in September, they filed reports with the police and the Louisiana Department of Education against another substitute teacher at the school who allegedly yanked their special-needs child by his backpack. Christina told KTVE, “If there are any other parents out there [and] this has happened to your child and you haven’t said anything please speak up!”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• High school teacher reassigned for dragging student across classroom by her braids

• Principal told 4th-grader her LGBTQ essay was ‘not acceptable,’ says lawsuit

• Father angrily confronts school officials after daughter, 5, is left behind by school bus — again

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