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B.C. teacher suspended after student passes out from headlock

Female student passed out, was left with bruises after two self-defence classes in Vancouver.
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Students in gym class. (File photo)

A Vancouver teacher has been suspended for four weeks after he put a female student in a headlock that left her unconscious.

A B.C. Teachers Regulation Branch report released Tuesday said that Weldon Cheung was teaching a self-defence class in late May 2017.

A Gr. 10 student asked Cheung if he would be teaching them how to escape a headlock. Cheung told her that she wouldn’t be able to get out of a headlock and demonstrated on the girl.

The student described the headlock as “being so tight that she could not breathe, causing her to struggle and panic and grab at Cheung’s forearms.”

The report said that Cheung then pulled the student backwards, causing both of them to fall and the student to lose consciousness.

Cheung did not report the incident to school administrators, nor did he get first aid for the student.

READ: B.C. teacher suspended after explicit images projected to class

The headlock comes on the heels of another incident earlier in May where Cheung left the same student with bruises on her stomach after having asked her to demonstrate a type of curl-up.

The report stated that he hit her in the stomach with a closed fist, saying that “if clients don’t do this right, this is what I do.”

The Vancouver School District issued Cheung a disciplinary letter in September and suspended him for 10 days without pay that same month.

In December, the B.C. Teachers Regulation Branch further suspended Cheung for two weeks. He will serve his suspension in mid-January.

The two 2017 incidents weren’t the first time that Cheung fell afoul of his school district’s policies; in 2011, he was reprimanded for talking to a female student about her boyfriend and referring to his own sexual activities while encouraging her to continue a weight training class.


@katslepian

katya.slepian@bpdigital.ca

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