Samantha Cox, a 24-year-old high school English teacher in Indiana, has been charged one week after she was filmed by student snorting what appeared to be cocaine in her classroom. Cox was teaching at Lake Central High School.
Cox, a St. John, Indiana resident, was charged with felony drug possession and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia after the teens caught her using substances on Wednesday, November 22.
The 24-year-old English teacher was arrested after students secretly filmed her through the locked door cutting up the white, powdery substance on a binder at around 10:20 a.m. during a break in between classes. In the video recorded by students, Cox is seen turning her back to the door, leaning over, and snorting the powdered substance.
Responding officers searched Cox’s vehicle and found a glass pipe in the glove box and “multiple empty small pieces of tin foil and multiple torn open plastic baggies.”
via Chicago Tribune:
Officers were called to the high school, 8400 Wicker Ave., around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday after students reported to the principal they saw Cox with drugs in her classroom, court documents said. A student “had video of what appeared to be a teacher ‘snorting’ a line of an illegal substance,” according to the probable cause affidavit.
On Wednesday, police brought Igar, a K-9 officer, to Cox’s classroom on the second floor of the school where the dog alerted police to possible drugs in the center drawer of Cox’s desk, the affidavit states. After an assistant principal unlocked the drawer, police found “a clear tightly twisted bag with multiple small rolled up pieces of tin foil,” court records state. Police also found an “outer plastic wrap from a cigarette package” with rolled up tin foil pieces, as well as “a rolled up small piece of paper” that looked like a straw that a detective “knows to be used to ingest illegal narcotics through one’s nostril,” the affidavit states.
Police then told Cox she was being placed under arrest, according to court records. Cox complied, giving police her car keys and instructing them where her car was parked, the affidavit states.
While being questioned by police, Cox said that fell early that morning before she purchased the “dope cocaine” for $160 from a dealer. She told police she had been using narcotics since beginning college.
Cox was booked and released from Lake County Jail on the same day after posting $1,000 bond. She was released on her own recognizance.
