A teacher in Florida has been accused of drowning racoons in front of his class Monday because he felt the animals were a nuisance to the agricultural program he was teaching at Forest High School in Ocala, The New York Post reported.
Dewie Brewton has been put on administrative leave with pay and removed from the classroom following the incident in which he allegedly drowned two racoons by placing them in cages and submerging them in water while his students watched and assisted.
An unidentified mother of one of the students said her son came home in tears after witnessing the incident.
He told his mother that Brewton drowned the racoons because they had killed several chickens that were raised by students and teachers.
"When the raccoons tried to come up for air they had metal rods and they held them down with metal rods and when the raccoon would try to pop its head up they held water hoses in its face to drown it," she told WKMG.
The mother said that an opossum that was found later was also killed "just for sport."
Marion County Public Schools said in a statement Tuesday that, while law enforcement said Brewton "may not have done anything illegal, his actions before students are certainly questionable," according to Time magazine.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating the matter but parents and community members have taken their own steps to address the situation by launching a petition calling for Brewton's dismissal.
"I don’t understand how someone would think this is okay," one petitioner said.
"Not to mention, there is a strong connection between psychopaths and harming animals. .doesn’t sound like someone who should be teaching."
Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Columbine High School shooters are among the infamous criminals who had a history of hurting animals before they went on to target humans.
Now this tendency has formed part of what's behind a movement to create public online registries of known animal abusers.
New York is among 11 states with animal abuse registry bills pending in their legislatures, following Tennessee, which started its in 2016 along with a growing number of municipalities in recent years, including New York City, and the counties that include Chicago and Tampa, Florida.
The sponsor of New York's bill, Republican state Sen. Jim Tedisco, noted that "animal abuse is a bridge crime."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.