‘We saw it all on Zoom’: Ohio family calls 911 as teacher was robbed during remote lesson
CLEVELAND (WJW) — A convicted felon broke into a home and then attacked an Ohio teacher while she was teaching a student on Zoom.
Charles Derosett was out of prison for 36 days when he attacked the teacher and now he is indicted on several charges including aggravated robbery and felonious assault.
The teacher was teaching a student on Nov. 23 when the lesson took at turn.
“My kid is on a Zoom session and we live in Kirtland and the teacher that teaches my son, somebody broke into her house, like we saw it all on the Zoom,” the student’s father told a police dispatcher. “I guess my wife heard the man say, ‘Get on the floor, I am going to cut your **** throat.’”
The family didn’t know the teacher’s address but they had a phone number. Lake County officials acted quickly, found out where she lived and called Cleveland police.
“It was good thinking on behalf of the student and the student’s family to reach out and figure out exactly where his teacher lived,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said.
The teacher was able to let her dogs out of a room and they chased the suspect out of the house. A man doing repair work down the road helped the teacher chase the armed suspect and they were able to detain him until police arrived.
“She was screaming, ‘help me, help me; he just robbed me,’” Robert Tubbs Jr. “So I went to tackle him but she yelled ‘he has a knife,’ and he tried to stab me with it.”
Tubbs said he continued to fight with the suspect.
“He is still swinging the knife at me, so I hit him again, and he yells ‘you got some of the stuff back; let me take one box,” Tubbs said.
“This individual needs to be taken off the street,” O’Malley said. “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.”