Teacher Accused of Attacking Elderly Couple

Incident involves spitting, hitting, choking

Commentary
by Bruce Felps

Fifth-grade students at Fort Worth’s A.M. Pate Elementary School learned a big lesson this past weekend in how not to conduct themselves in public.

Their teacher, Brenda Stafford, faces charges of assaulting an elderly couple in an Arlington mall after a confrontation over a chair allegedly triggered her temper.

According to an article published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Stafford, 47, twisted off on 71-year-old woman who sat in one chair of the food court and propped a leg in another at the table while Stafford collected seats for her class.

Rudeness on the part of Stafford reportedly ensued, and it escalated to childish behavior, verbal exchanges, saliva exchanges, and not in the good way, a physical confrontation between the women, which spread to the older lady’s husband when he tried to intervene.

That’s when Stafford allegedly knocked down the 73-year-old, punched him, and choked him, and she must be quite proud of herself for scoring a TKO on a 73-year-old guy.

She’s on administrative leave from her teaching position, according to a district spokeswoman, during the investigation, and parents of Pate Elementary students must be relived by that bit of news, but really, is a classroom the place for someone who goes wheels off on an elderly couple after previously facing charges of “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and assault with bodily injury” even though those charges were dropped?


Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He had a few pretty nasty teachers back in the day, but damn. 

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