50-year-old teacher Jennifer Hale is in trouble with the law after she was arrested for letting a 7th-grade student take a hit off her vape pen with the reason that she was trying to fit in.
The details via the Daily Mail;
A substitute teacher gave a seventh grader a hit of her vape pen in a bid to ‘fit in’ with the rest of the young class, cops say.
Now charged with child abuse, 50-year-old Jennifer Hale was arrested on Friday, and is also out of a job due the alleged incident – which transpired at a Central Florida middle school on May 2.
The student who allegedly used the vape pen has not been named due to his age, and told cops that Hale had confronted her during a conversation he was having with classmate about the nicotine delivering devices.
He claimed that after overhearing their talk, Hale ‘chimed in’ to say that she had one – before brandishing it behind her desk and asking if he wanted a hit. After he obliged, she allegedly told the class to keep quiet about what she had just done.
School administrators quickly learned of the incident – and immediately confronted the middle-aged temp on campus during school hours. She proceeded to own up to the act, and was escorted off the premises and told to never return.
Shortly thereafter, she was arrested at her Mt. Dora home five miles away – at which point she again confessed to local cops. She then offered officers the questionable explanation.
‘We contacted her she immediately post-Miranda confessed to doing it,’ Eustis Police Chief Craig Capri told WESH following Hale’s arrest Friday, providing the woman’s bizarre motive.
‘Her response was she just wanted to fit in.’
Appearing for a video interview with the local outlet, the town’s top cop proceeded to decry the woman’s defense.
‘I don’t get it. What is there to fit in?’ he asked aloud, visibly dumbfounded by Hale’s alleged explanation regarding her actions last week at Eustis Middle School.
‘You’re there to teach a class, not to fit in. She has a responsibility to that classroom to protect kids. Not abuse them.’
Hale has since been released on $1,000 bond – despite facing a third-degree felony.
She stands accused of one count of child abuse – and cops reportedly confiscated her vape pen as evidence.
According to her arrest affidavit, the unnamed child who hit the vape only did so once before returning it.
She faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted, as well as five years probation and a $5,000 fine. A court date has not yet been announced.
Flip to the next page for Jennifer Hale’s picture…
