Fight In Class At Gibbs High School In Florida Raises Security Questions

A fight in class at a Florida high school is generating safety concerns for teachers there, ABC Action News reported in the segment above.

Caught on cell phone video by a student who appears to egg them on, two girls from Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg exchange verbal blows for several minutes while the teacher, sensing an imminent fight, temporarily forms a barricade between the two.

Then the confrontation turns physical, with the two girls wrestling and punching each other. In the full-length video procured by the Tampa Bay Times, no one else appeared to intervene until after the fight broke out in earnest.

Lisa Wheeler-Brown, president of a local neighborhood association, told the Times: "I'm not sure if the teacher called for help or not. But if she did, it should not take 4 minutes and 32 seconds to get help in the classroom. I felt sorry for the teacher. She had no control. No help. No nothing."

Gibbs Principal Stephanie Adkinson attempted to reassure parents with a recorded message, saying that the school takes safety seriously, and that the confrontation was an isolated incident, according to outlets. But the Times reported that last year Gibbs "issued 76 out-of-school suspensions for fighting, the most of any Pinellas [County] high school."

Last March, two teens at Gibbs were arrested after a loaded gun was found in one of their backpacks, Bay News 9 reported previously.

Police were not called after the most recent incident, but the combatants and the boy who filmed the classroom altercation face undisclosed punishment, ABC Action News noted.