Ohio Teacher Robbed At Knifepoint During Zoom Call With Student

A recently released convicted felon is likely on his way back to prison after robbing a teacher at knifepoint back in November.

Amanda Zupancic, a special education teacher at Kirtland Schools in Cleveland, Ohio, was on Zoom with a student and parent when she heard glass shatter downstairs.

According to Daily Mail, Zupancic “jokingly told her student’s mother that someone was breaking into her house.” When she went to assess the situation, her joke quickly became her reality.

“There was a man walking through my baby gate with a knife in his hand walking upstairs. He started threatening me, yelling at me, calling me names. He grabbed me upstairs into my bedroom,” Zupancic said. “He was telling me, ‘Don’t move. Give me your wallet and keys’.”

The parent and student who were listening on Zoom instantly phoned the police. “Get on the floor, I am going to cut your f***ing throat,” they recall hearing.

According to the New York Post, Zupancic led the burglar downstairs where she released her two dogs — a German shepherd and a Great Dane-boxer mix.  “As one of her pooches ‘went at him,’ she took the split-second opportunity to grab a pair of scissors and chase the man to her front door.”

Zupancic recalled that she “started chasing him with his pair of scissors, in my house shoes, down the street, yelling, ‘Help me, help me, this guy robbed me.’”

A contractor nearby luckily spotted Zupancic and tackled the suspect to the ground. Detaining him until authorities arrived.

The suspect, identified as Charles Derosett, was indicted by a Cuyahoga County grand jury last week on charges of aggravated robbery and felonious assault, the Post reports. He had been out of prison for only 36 days prior to committing the crime.

“This individual needs to be taken off the street,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley told WJW, reported by the Post.  “Our county is not safe with him out again, he is out for 36 days and breaking into occupied homes. He needs to go back to prison.”