A veteran former White Knoll Middle School teacher charged last August with assaulting a student has been acquitted after a jury trial last week in a Lexington County magistrate’s court, her attorney said.
“The jury of five women and one man was out 20 minutes,” said Columbia attorney Alex Postic, who tried the case with Chelsea Glover, an Orangeburg attorney.
Teacher Brenda Inabinette, 59, who testified in her own defense, walked out of the courtroom with her reputation intact, said Postic. She had been charged with third degree assault and battery. If found guilty, she could have been subject to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Eight other witnesses testified on Inabinette’s behalf about her character and teaching style, which Postic characterized as “stern but caring.”
The trial lasted about five hours, Postic said.
Prosecutor Joel Deason, general counsel for the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, had no immediate comment on the case.
In a press release last year, the sheriff’s office quoted an unidentified student as telling school officials and deputies that he accidentally went to the wrong classroom after a trip to the restroom and that prompted the encounter with Inabinette.
”An arrest warrant said Inabinette grabbed the student’s ID lanyard while it was around his neck and said, ‘You make me want to strangle you,’” according to the sheriff’s department’s press release.
Postic said Inabinette was suspended briefly from teaching, and after the school district did its own internal investigation, she was reinstated in another position.
“She maintained her innocence the whole time,” Postic said.
Postic said he told the jury that an encounter took place betweeen Inabinette and the student but to describe what she did as a crime “was overstating the situation,” he said.
Glover, Postic’s co-counsel, said she had been a student of Inabinette’s years ago in a seventh-grade English class in Orangeburg County.
Inabinette is a dedicated teacher who seeks the best for her students and gets them to excel not only in the subject but in life, Glover said in an interview.
“She’s a tough teacher and she loves her students,” said Glover, who volunteered her time to help Postic on the case.
Lexington County Magistrate Rebecca Adams presided.