School district employee resigns after racist rant caught on video

A Connecticut school district employee is out of a job after a viral video appeared to show her shouting racial slurs and spitting at at a black man at an East Haven supermarket.

Credit: Sophia Nicholas / Pixabay.com

Credit: Sophia Nicholas / Pixabay.com

A Connecticut school district employee is out of a job after a viral video appeared to show her shouting racial slurs and spitting at at a black man at an East Haven supermarket.

A Connecticut woman is out of a job after a viral video appeared to show her shouting racial slurs and spitting at a black man at an East Haven supermarket.

According to the Hartford Courant, Corinne Terrone, a clerk for Hamden Public Schools, resigned after the district "arranged an investigatory meeting with her" about the video shared Friday on Facebook, officials said Saturday. The footage of the incident, which occurred at a ShopRite store, quickly went viral, with more than 8,700 shares and 4,800 comments.

>> On Facebook.com: Watch the video here (WARNING: Linked video contains profanity and racial slurs. Viewer discretion advised.)

"We have become aware of video footage that appears to show an employee in our district engaged in abhorrent conduct. Specifically, the video appears to show the employee repeatedly calling an African-American man the N-word in a supermarket in East Haven," the school district said in a statement. "The video also appears to show the Hamden employee spitting at the aforementioned African-American male as he was walking away from the employee. It also appears that the employee's children witnessed her conduct. Because her children were present, school administrators filed a DCF report."

The statement continued: "The language the employee used in the video is in conflict with the values of the Hamden Public School System. Someone who will use that sort of language in any setting, whether public or private, is not someone we want anywhere near our children. The employee is separated from service, and we hope that her children will receive the support they need after witnessing such a traumatic event."

>> On Hamden.org: Read the full statement here

Police are investigating but "have not been contacted by anybody directly involved," East Haven police Lt. Joseph Murgo told the Courant.

"Speech like this has no place in today's society, and nobody deserves to be spit at or called racist names," he said.

So far, no arrests have been made.

Read more here or here.

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