BROOKLYN TEACHER FAKES STAIRWAY ACCIDENT TO TRY TO SAVE JOB
From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Brooklyn Injury Lawyer)
How far will you go to keep a job that pays $50,000 per year?
First-year, newbie teacher Ilene Feldman was working at New York City's High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media. She had received a poor first evaluation and was scheduled to have her classroom observed.
She was so scared that she would do poorly, that she decided to play hookey by being out sick, to be accomplished by faking a staircase accident - which was caught on videotape. As a non-tenured teacher, Feldman was subject to dismissal at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
Administrators at the Canarsie school -- suspicious of Feldman's injury because it coincided with a classroom-observation meeting -- handed security-camera footage to school investigators after concluding that Feldman purposely fell down the stairs. A review of the footage shows the 33-year-old teacher pausing near he bottom of a narrow staircase and bending over to go through her handbag. She next looks around and, seeing no one, does a slow fall down two steps to the floor.
Feldman grabbed at her leg and started screaming in pain. The footage "revealed that Feldman actually threw herself down the stairs in a controlled fall," said the report, which was completed last year but never before made public.
Feldman claimed she fell because her foot got stuck on a stair -- possibly on a piece of a gum. Feldman was taken to a nearby hospital after the December 2008 topple; she received for four days of Workers' Compensation for time out of work. (Sounds like fraud to me.)
When confronted by investigators, Feldman twice declined to watch frame-by-frame footage of her fall. She kept insisting her tumble wasn't a tall tale -- but quickly resigned.
See this video:
Comment: While I like a good scam as much as the next person, here's why I think this teacher was too to stupid to believe:
1. How do you teach in a New York City high school for a year and not know that there's video surveillance in the hallways and staircases?
2. If you're going to fake a fall, why risk actual injury by actually falling? Why didn't she just lay down by the stairs and grab her leg and make a commotion?
