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A former substitute teacher in Florida is facing felony charges after she allegedly encouraged two middle school students to fight each other.
Ty’Asia Holmes, 20, was arrested by Hendry County School Resource Officers on April 16 after a parent showed officials a video on her child’s cell phone of an in-class altercation between two students the day before.
The censored video appears to show Holmes holding back one student who is being taunted by another. As both students continue to argue, Holmes can be heard telling them to deal with their issues outside of school at the park, according to a Hendry County Sheriff’s Department Facebook post.
One of the kids wasn’t a student in the class, according to Southwest Florida Online News, which reported that prior to the fight, Holmes had requested that the front desk send the student who wasn’t in the class into her classroom, although it’s unclear why.
“We were really kind of taken [aback] by the behavior, of what we saw and what we heard. At one point, she tells the students in one of the videos that they need to take it outside or take it off the school campus and take it to the park. You don’t encourage children to fight,” department spokesperson Capt. Susan Harrelle told Fort Myers Fox affiliate WFTX.
Holmes was arrested and charged with two counts of child neglect and eight counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She was released on a $35,000 bond. No attorney is currently listed for her.
The Hendry County School District said that Holmes had passed background checks and had been working in the district for the past two years, WFTX reported.
Superintendent Mike Swindle told the station that the district is “continuing to add safety layers to our schools” and said that Holmes has since been fired and banned from all Hendry County schools.
“One blemish like this is painful to us, we don’t like it, but it happened and we’re gonna deal with it, get better from it and move forward,” Swindle told WFTX.
The sheriff’s office said it may issue juvenile citations to the students involved in the fight, the station reported.
