A Connecticut teacher who went viral for threatening violence against supporters of President-elect Trump in a post-election meltdown is now considering a run for public office.
The video showed Annie Dunleavy, an elementary school teacher from Cheshire, Connecticut, threatening to “handle” supporters of Trump. “Just because you won doesn’t mean we don’t remember who the f**k you voted for,” Dunleavy can be heard saying in the viral clip. “Please don’t test your gangster on me because you will end on a stretcher, gone forever. So serious.”
“If you voted for Trump please delete me, block me, get rid of everything of me or step to me so that I know what’s up, and I can handle you how I see fit,” she added. “Please just come forward, we f***ing know.”
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After the clip went viral, Cheshire Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Jeff Solan acknowledged that the district had been made aware. “Unfortunately, it came to my attention over the weekend that someone had taken a video of one of our teachers who shared what she intended to be a private message to her group on Snapchat. She was expressing her personal opinion and not those of the Cheshire Public Schools,” Solan said in a statement.
“That being said, it is immediately clear that it will be impossible to conduct business as usual for our students and staff without temporarily removing the teacher from the building, so we have done so until the outcome of the investigation.”
Dunleavy went on to resign a few hours after the statement was released to the public. The Cheshire Police Department added that they were also aware of the video, though officials ultimately opted not to bring any charges against the former teacher.
Over the weekend, Dunleavy apologized for the incident in an interview with NEWS 8 WTNH.com. “I was in a moment of high emotion, and I shouldn’t have posted,” she told the outlet. “The message came off wrong, which was if this is going to give people the permission in their minds to enact violence against women, I wanted to say, I’m not going down without a fight.”
“I will fight for myself, and if someone was to try to hurt me, I would protect myself.”
In a rather bizarre turn, the outlet went on to ask Dunleavy if she would consider “running for office or getting involved in something that would perhaps lead to change.”
“Yes, I think that (venting on social media) was my initial thought of how I could make a change and how I could share my views, and clearly that is not the right way to go about it,” she responded.
The former teacher went on to claim that her video was not meant to be a threat. “I hope that people know I am not a danger, I would never hurt anyone, I have never hurt anyone unless my safety was in danger – and that was the point I was trying to get across,” she explained. “But I completely understand why it was taken a different way.”
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