Teacher’s Excrement Story False, Officials Say

A Compton high school teacher lied last month when she claimed four students drenched her in excrement as she walked out of a classroom, according to prosecutors, who expect to charge the instructor today with filing a false police report.

Shannan Barron, a first-year English teacher at Compton’s Dominguez High School, faces a single misdemeanor count, authorities said. She is expected to surrender for booking and arraignment at Compton Municipal Court on Sept. 16, police said.

Barron’s lawyer said Wednesday that her client is telling the truth.

Barron told police and school officials that four students emptied a trash can of liquefied feces on her as she left her classroom after second period July 16.

But police said no evidence or witnesses emerged to back up her allegations. In a crime lab analysis of the pants Barron said she was wearing when attacked and the sweatpants she changed into afterward, fecal matter was found only inside the clothes, police said.

“It appears that Barron had a personal accident and is the source of the feces,” Police Chief Hourie L. Taylor said.

Police also said Barron made inconsistent statements about the alleged attack. At the time she filed the report, she said she believed her attackers were friends or relatives of a student she had failed.

Barron could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Her lawyer, L’Tanya Butler, said police did not take Barron’s clothes for examination until a week after the incident, and she accused police of intimidating potential witnesses. She said Barron has not returned to work and is in counseling.

Butler called the expected misdemeanor charge “an entirely ludicrous complaint.”