School officials in a Florida community say they have heightened security after a former teacher threatened to “seize” a school board building using “200-plus armored tanks.”
Authorities identified the former employee as David Givins, a former third-grade teacher at North Hialeah Elementary School, WSVN-TV reported.
#EXCLUSIVE: Former Hialeah elementary teacher posts menacing video online. “I want 200-plus armored tanks to seize North Hialeah Elementary and Miami-Dade County Public School Board building,” he says in the videohttps://t.co/wMrj88LFbY pic.twitter.com/ij7Q2fMfeS
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) August 24, 2018
In the nearly 8-minute-long YouTube video, Givins is heard calling out teachers and school officials. He also calls upon President Trump to supply him with the tanks so he can retake the North Hialeah school system.
“It’s not clown time. This is a serious situation,” he says.
“I am the superior human being that will ever exist.”
“I am the superior human being that will ever exist,” he is heard saying. “Not one of you Cuban teachers who taught at North Hialeah Elementary was my equal.”
He said, however, he “would not create no violent crime.”
“But I will push levels verbally,” he said.
Near the end of the video, Givins apologizes for not killing kids.
“I apologize for not killing people’s children — FBI agents, CIA agents, Department of Justice people’s, Congress — I apologize that I failed you all in not killing people’s children,” Givins says.
School officials say they have heightened security across district campuses in response, WSVN reported.
They assured that there was “no imminent risk to students and employees of the school,” the Miami-Dade County Public Schools said in a statement to the station.
An armed guard will be assigned to the North Hialeah campus and the district has also reached out to the FBI, Miami-Dade Police Department’s Bureau of Homeland Security and the Secret Service, the report said.
Givins worked at the school for 13 years before being fired in 2014 for “teacher certification issues,” the Miami Herald reported, citing the school district.
Givins says in a video that he is now homeless and living in Washington, D.C. Authorities in Florida say they have alerted authorities in the nation’s capital.
Hialeah is about 12 miles northwest of Miami.
