The mother of a Texas high school student seen in a now-viral video hitting and yelling at a Black teacher is citing autism and a bipolar condition for her daughter’s erratic behavior.
In a recent interview with WFAA-TV, Brittany Evans told the news station she was “upset for the teacher” and “upset for her even being in that situation” that was recorded and later uploaded by a Twitter user that has since thousands of views from users online.
Evans told reporters that her daughter, who has not been named, is autistic, bipolar, and battles depression with anxious distress. The mother says she’s been in nearly a dozen meetings in an attempt to have her child placed into a classroom more suitable for children with special needs, but to no avail. “I wish the school would label her correctly so we didn’t have to go through this,” the mother said.
In the clip, Evans’ daughter, a student at Fort Worth’s Castleberry High School, is seen marching up to the front of the classroom and seemingly ending a call being made by the unnamed Black substitute teacher from a landline located at her desk.
The woman attempts to remove the student’s hand from the phone, at which point the student hits the teacher on the arm. The teacher walks around the desk to approach the student and then proceeds out of the classroom.
After the teacher’s exit, Evans’ daughter then grabbed the phone and appeared to make a call to her mother, when she later made a comment about the teacher’s race.
“I need you to [unintelligible] now,” the student said. “This teacher’s about to get f-cked up if she doesn’t get the f-ck away from me. You want to talk to her because she’s Black, and she’s f-cking pissing me off right now.”
Evans told the news station she has no idea where her daughter “would learn something like that” because she reportedly doesn’t “throw racial slangs, ever.” “I know none of my family members that live in the house with me throw racial slangs ever,” she added.
Evans said her daughter was suspended for three days following the incident but says she wanted to apologize to the teacher. The Castleberry ISD Police has since launched an investigation into the situation.
The Executive Director for the United Educators Association, Steve Poole, told WFAA that the student needs to face a criminal charge. “What that student did is a felony under state law,” Poole said. “Assaulting a public servant — and a teacher is a public servant — is a felony. And hopefully the student will face appropriate consequences.”
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