In “What was that teacher thinking?” news, a 350-pound Minnesota school teacher is accused of stepping on a 6th-grade student’s back during a lockdown drill, injuring the boy. The teacher said he didn’t think the student and two of his friends were taking the drill seriously.
According to the Tri-City Herald, three students at Underwood School in Otter Tail County were lying on their stomachs and not seated like they were told to during a lockdown drill when their teacher, 47-year-old Jason Rogers, said he could step on them to prove a point. Citing a criminal complaint filed about a month after the incident happened, Rogers then stepped on one of the boys for 10 seconds, who began to cry.
The boy said he didn’t know what was going on
According to the criminal complaint, the boy told police he didn’t understand what was happening and said he hadn’t heard Rogers tell them to sit up. He said his teacher stood on him like a “stepping stool,” the whole class saw what happened, and the boy thought he had broken his back.
To Rogers’ credit, he asked the boy if he was okay and said he was concerned when the boy missed school the rest of the week. The boy went to the hospital for his injuries, and the boy’s mother said he “was walking around like an 80-year-old from the pain in his back,” according to The Minnesota Star-Tribune.
The Star-Tribune also notes Rogers told police at first he only stepped on the boy’s lower back but then later admitted he stepped on the boy with both feet and said he stepped on two other students, too.
Rogers was arrested and charged with one gross misdemeanor count of malicious punishment of a child. The Otter Tail County school district confirmed he’s on administrative leave. Rogers, a fifth and sixth-grade science teacher who also coaches wrestling and football, is expected in court on April 8.
Two recent heavy-adult child crimes
From the sounds of things, the kid in Minnesota will be all right, and maybe Rogers just made a poor choice and was having a bad day at work. Just a few weeks before the Rogers news broke, however, a similar but much more tragic story reached its conclusion in Indiana.
In April last year, Dakota Levi Stevens, a 10-year-old boy, died after his 340-pound foster mother, Jennifer Lee Wilson, sat on him to prevent him from misbehaving. Wilson told police he was “acting bad” and had threatened to run away from home and then thrown himself on the ground. She said she sat on him for five minutes to stop him from leaving until he stopped moving.
Steven’s cause of death was declared mechanical asphyxia and the manner of death was homicide. In March, Wilson was sentenced to six years in prison, with one year suspended for probation.
Published: Mar 28, 2025 8:17 PM UTC