A 64-year-old art teacher who punched a student several times in the face after he allegedly called her obscene names and backed her against a wall has been cleared.
The teacher’s second punch gets the student on the jaw and his head swings back
Though Sandra Hadsock, of Hernando County, was originally charged with child abuse and can be seen clearly punching the student in the video, the State Attorney’s Office has decided not to file criminal charges, saying it is not clear whether she wasn’t acting in self-defense.
The video, taken by one of the other students in the classroom, shows the teenager towering over the teacher at the wall.
SEE THE VIDEO HERE
The mother-of-two can then be seen swinging at the teen, just missing his jaw. She takes another shot, gripping his jacket collar as she does and catches him on the jaw.
Her punch is so powerful, the student’s head snaps back and the rest of the students in the classroom can be heard screaming and shouting with one saying: ‘Oh my God! He didn’t do anything. You can’t punch him in the face.’
Mrs Hadsock replies: ‘He pushed into me.’
The student is then heard saying: ‘I didn’t touch her. You guys saw that, right? I didn’t touch her.’
It was reported at the time that the 64-year-old’s assault gave the teen a cut lip and she was arrested on a single count of child abuse.
According to the St Petersburg Times, prosecutor Brian Trehy said the video doesn’t provide conclusive evidence that the 64-year-old veteran teacher wasn’t acting in self-defense when she swung at the student.
He said that students who witnessed the incident said the teen made contact first and the teacher was responding to that.
‘You couldn’t put a piece of paper between them,’ Mr Trehy said. ‘You can’t tell if he actually made contact, but it’s certainly reasonable to believe that it could have happened.’
Mrs Hadsock told the Times: ‘It was the right thing to do. I was defending myself, and he made the right decision.’
She claims that the student licked a classroom window and left saliva and refused to clean it up when asked, so she told him to go to the principal’s office.
It was then that he launched a verbal assault on her and called her a f***ing c*** and then walked towards her.
The 64-year-old’s attorney Ty Tyson said that the video speaks for itself.
‘If she would have done nothing, you might have been talking about some very severe injuries to a 64-year-old teacher. She wasn’t going to wait to find out.’
The student was suspended but not arrested.
Mrs Hadsock started with the district as a substitute teacher in 1985 and became a full-time teacher three years later, a faculty member when Central opened in 1988.
She has a clean disciplinary record and was voted by students for the school’s Teacher of the Year award last school year.
She said she hopes school officials will consider the facts of her case and her record, and allow her to return to the classroom, but it’s still unclear if that will happen.
