A teacher at Fishburn Primary School faces a lifetime ban after threatening a colleague with a knife during school hours
Fishburn: So, there was this pretty shocking incident at Fishburn Primary School. David Crawford, a teacher there for 15 years, got into some serious trouble. He actually pressed a knife to a colleague’s throat. Can you believe that?
This all went down in the school office back on May 4, 2020. During a misconduct hearing, it came out that Crawford snuck up behind the woman, pinned her down, and put a knife—yeah, the same one he used for buttering toast—right to her neck.
And get this, the office door was wide open, with little kids wandering around in the hallway. The woman said she felt the metal against her skin and totally panicked. She was in tears after he left the room.
When he came back, he tried to play it off as a joke, saying he was just “clowning around.” But the whole thing was reported to HR that same day, and the police got involved a month later.
Fast forward to August 2021, and he was convicted of assault. He had to pay over a grand in fines. During a disciplinary hearing later, he didn’t even accept the verdict and claimed the accusations were “dishonest.”
The woman, who had just started at the school, described Crawford as aggressive and uncooperative. He even messed with her chair once, unscrewing it so she would fall when she sat down. What a jerk!
He skipped the misconduct hearing, which wrapped up last month, and the panel found no sign of remorse from him. They recommended he be banned from teaching altogether.
Panel chair Emma Garrett made it clear that Crawford’s actions were violent and not just a one-time thing. It was part of a pattern of bad behavior towards this woman.
In the end, he got an indefinite ban from teaching in England. Durham County Council, which ran the school at the time, has been asked for a comment on the situation.
