Florida teacher accused of drowning animals in front of students – By Cydney Henderson (The Arizona Republic) / May 17 2018
An agriculture teacher at a Florida high school is on administrative leave after school officials say he drowned animals in class with the help of students.
Videos obtained by WKMG in Orlando, Fla., show Forest High School teacher Dewie Brewton and several students drowning two wild raccoons and an opossum as the rest of the class watched.
“It made me sick to my stomach. It’s terrible,” a mother of one of Brewton’s students told the TV station. “It still does make me sick to my stomach.”
What happened?
Footage shows Brewton and students putting a raccoon in a metal wire trap into a garbage bin. They then used several hoses to fill it with water to drown “nuisance animals” in class. The drowned animals were accused of killing the class chickens.
“When the raccoons tried to come up for air they had metal rods and they held them down with metal rods and when the raccoon would try to pop its head up they held water hoses in its face to drown it,” the mother told the network.
She said her son came home in tears.
Investigation opened
The Marion County Public School official said they are investigating the incident.
“While law enforcement tells us the teacher did not do anything illegal, his actions before students are certainly questionable,” a spokesperson said in a statement to multiple news outlets.
Brewton’s future with the school remains unclear.
“The district is determining the status of the teacher at this moment,” the statement adds.
A spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the agency is also opening an investigation, according to WKMG.
Some of Brewton’s former students, however, say they are “100% behind” the agriculture teacher.
“This is a man who would give everything he had to make sure that his children/students are taken care of,” the Forest High School FFA Alumni group posted to Facebook. “He has always gone above and beyond his call of duty to ensure that his students had everything they needed.”
