ROCKDALE COUNTY, Ga. -- A video of a man in a physical altercation with a high school student in grabbing local attention - and it's hard to watch.
But even more disturbing is the fact that it was a classroom in Rockdale County - and the man involved was a Salem High School teacher - one who they now say is no longer an employee.
The video shows the details. It escalated quickly and students said they didn't see it coming.
I was shocked," one student, Angel Russell, said. "I didn't believe."
One minute Angel Russell and her classmates were in the tenth-grade geometry class - and the next in the middle of a violent confrontation, their teacher seemingly pinning a student down and grabbing him by the legs and dragging him. This all happens before the student gets up and throws a book at him.
Russell said the fight started when the teacher asked the student to move to his new assigned seat. And that's where the video - now circulating on social media - picks up.
Renita Carter-Jefferson's child is a student there.
"He's too old to be hitting little kids like that," she said.
But opinions have been mixed.
"If he's calling him those types of words, I wouldn't sit there and take it," Marcus Lynch said. "Nobody should."
The teacher was initially placed on administrative leave. But the school said that, as of Tuesday, he is no longer with the school. 11Alive has reached out to him and is still waiting for a response.
