Leon County police arrested a Tallahassee teacher for allegedly organizing a “fight club” in her classroom, encouraging students to engage in a “friendly” brawl.
According to the official records obtained by News Onyx, 23-year-old sixth-grade teacher Angel Drew Footman at Griffin Middle School impelled her students to fight each other for 30 seconds in the classroom, demanding that none of the students, including those fighting, make a sound.
Footman also prohibited filming the fights, but students disregarded the rule and captured the altercations on their cell phones.
The exact date Footman allegedly initiated this aberrant and violent “extracurricular” activity is imprecise, but police collected cellphone videos from the unnamed students (most likely because they’re underage).
In one video, a fight brewed between two females on March 22, 2023. Another video’s time stamp showed that a second altercation occurred the same day. The next day (March 23), two other females engaged in a fight. The police report read that the video caught Footman screaming, “No screaming, no nothing” and “Stop pulling hair” as her students fought.
LCSO investigators interviewed students (with parental approval), and they all said Footman sat at her desk as the fights happened. She reportedly didn’t attempt to stop them and didn’t inform administrators. Footman would order the other students to break up the fights instead of doing it herself since she’s the supposed adult in the room.
But the middle school conducted more mature behavior because they reportedly were the ones who informed Griffin Middle School administrators.
The report read that two students “were called out of other classes to engage in these fights” and “class rosters verified that both girls were not supposed to be in Footman’s classroom when the fights occurred.”
When investigators interviewed the middle school teacher, she denied organizing the demented fights and calling students out of their other classes to fight. She said she didn’t stop them because they “all happened too fast for her to do anything.” She also said she couldn’t call for help because her desk phone wasn’t working, but confessed that was a lie and admitted she should’ve used her cell phone to call someone.
She then “stated outright that she knows she has poor classroom management skills.”
LCSO officials issued an arrest warrant for Footman on April 6. The Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office booked her into the Leon County Jail on April 7 for four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Footman was released from jail the same day. She has an arraignment set for May 4, according to WCTV.
