A Kentucky teacher who was filmed fighting a 16-year-old student has been fired, MTO News has learned.
William Bennett, a science teacher at Marion C. Moore School in Louisville was fired following an investigation by Jefferson County Public Schools, which found he had “escalated the situation” and made “inappropriate comments,” to the 16 year old boy.
Prior to the termination, Mr Bennett had been assigned to “non-instructional duties” by the county, since video of the incident went viral in August.
The investigation found that the altercation began when 16 year old Jamir Strane punched Bennett in the back of the head. In an ensuing struggle, Bennett pinned Jamir to the ground and put his “whole body weight on top of him.”
As onlookers yelled for the teacher to get off the student, Jamir continued to try and punch Mr Bennett. When, the teen eventually freed himself from the teacher’s hold, the teacher began pulling the student’s hair, footage of the altercation shows.
“He said, ‘You’re just going to be another black boy shot,’” Strane told WDRB . “I’m going to put it in English. He said ‘You’re going to end up in the streets dead,’ in my mind, like all my friends.”
The teen was suspended for 10 days and faced an assault charge over the incident.
It was far from Mr Bennett’s first run in with students. In 1999, when he taught in the near by Hardin County Schools, the teacher also grabbed a student who had been misbehaving.