'She put her own life at risk': Teacher tackles intruder at Tennessee elementary school

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The kindergarten teacher started getting suspicious as soon as she heard a man on the sidewalk mumble he wanted to cut across the playground.

The teacher, Rachel Davis, told him no; he'd have to go the the front door of school if he wanted to get in for any reason.

Suspicion turned to anxiety when the man disappeared for a minute, came back and started walking around in circles on the morning of May 11. The guy was only about 20 feet away from 32 kindergarteners outside for recess at Inglewood Elementary School in Nashville.

"You get that fishy feeling," said Davis, 30. "To play it safe, I said, let’s line the kids up... so we can all go in."

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The moment the other teacher opened the door, the man hopped the fence and raced toward the door, Davis said.

"I need to get inside! I need to get inside!" he shouted.

Davis, terrified, planted her 5-foot-5, 130-pound body in front of the door, saying loudly, "No sir! You cannot come through this door. I need you to leave the playground."

'Run! Go inside now!'

When Davis first saw the man, she thought he might be a parent, and she instructed him to stay on the sidewalk and walk around the building to the front door. There, he could push a buzzer to tell an office staffer what he needed.

The man walked away, but returned, prompting the teachers to start getting their students inside, Davis said. About half the 32 kids made it inside before the man jumped the three-foot-high fence.

"Get help!" Davis urged the other teacher, and soon, school secretary Katrina "Nikki" Thomas was outside standing with Davis between the man and the door, trying to stop the intruder from getting in.

The man lunged toward the door, bumping three kids, Davis said.

So she got behind him and wrapped both arms around him, squeezing him as hard as she could to stop him from getting inside.

Davis' students, frozen, stared at her and the man until she shouted at them: "Run! Go inside now!"

The man continued lunging toward the door, eventually making it inside the stairwell with Davis still wrapped around his back, she said.

The man broke free and started running toward the first-grade wing – and something snapped inside Davis.

"I was going to do anything in my power to protect these kids, not just my kindergarten kids," she said. "All these kids feel like my kids."

Davis ran after the man and launched herself at him, tackling him. Both of them ended up falling backward, crashing on the floor onto Davis' left elbow, breaking it, she said.

The intruder got up, and Davis, the secretary, Thomas, and school bookkeeper Shaquita "Shay" Patton-Thomas all restrained the man in a corner for more than 10 minutes until police arrived, Davis and Principal Ashley Croft said.

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That was a long 10 minutes, Davis said. The four wrestled and jostled, with the intruder alternating between calm and highly agitated.

The intruder, who smelled of alcohol, said he had used drugs, adding he felt paranoid that someone was out to get him, Davis said.

'They put their lives on the line'

As police arrived, a colleague led Davis to an empty classroom, where the pain of her broken elbow and the emotion of the incident overwhelmed her.

"I was in full blown panic, trembling, and my legs didn’t want to support my weight," she said. "I was shaking so much, and my eyes were really big. I was mostly in a state of shock after all that."

Davis got a cast on her arm at a Nashville hospital and went home to recover for six days before returning to the classroom. Parents and teachers brought food and gifts for her and her husband to their home .

Staff and parents also showered praise on Davis and staffers Thomas and Patton-Thomas for confronting the intruder, whom they only later found out was unarmed.

The principal, Croft, said she cried later when she watched surveillance video of the incident.

"Ms. Davis is such a mild, gentle person. What I saw in that video was her doing anything and everything it took to protect those kids," the principal said.

"She and Nikki and Shay are heroes. There’s no telling what would’ve happened had they not acted. They put their lives on the line for our kids."

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One kindergartener's mom, Kate Whitley, called Davis "a bad-ass hero."

And an unlikely one, perhaps.

"She's very petite and organized and color coded and logical," Whitley said of Davis. "I didn't know this fierce lion was lurking in there. She put her own life at risk so my daughter’s wasn’t."

Davis, Thomas and Patton-Thomas and their principal are expected in court Tuesday for a hearing for the intruder on charges including assault and trespassing.

Davis and Croft said they are unsure how they'll feel being in the same room as the intruder again.

"He wasn’t trying to hurt anybody," Croft said, "but people still got hurt and the terror was real."

Davis said she's still uncomfortable on the playground and has had a hard time finding time to process the incident outside a brief conversation with a school mental health expert. But she did have a powerful, healing moment her first day back. The first student to walk in that day rushed up and hugged her and started sobbing. Davis cried, too.

"We just had this moment where we're hugging each other as the tears fell," she said. "And he just said that he was so glad that I was back."

Follow Brad Schmitt on Twitter @bradschmitt.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee kindergarten teacher tackles intruder at elementary school