Teacher pulls knife on students for talking during pop quiz

A middle school math teacher in New Mexico waved a big, sharp knife at two students who were talking too much during a pop quiz, police say.

The incident happened on Friday at Bernalillo Middle School in Bernalillo, a small suburb maybe 20 miles north of Albuquerque, area affiliate KOB-TV reports.

The teacher, Benjamin Nagurski, had the knife out in the middle school classroom because he was digging staples out of a bulletin board on the wall.

He approached the two unidentified students who were chatting during the pop quiz. "Stop talking," Nagurski, 63, said, while holding the knife perhaps four feet from the students. "Maybe next time I'll pull a machete on you," the math teacher later told one of the boys later, according to police.

"At one point, the teacher told the student the next time he could bring a machete," Bernalillo police chief Tom Romero explained, according to Albuquerque CBS affiliate KRQE.

Nagurski insisted that he had obviously made the machete comment in jest. One of the students sent a text message to his parents after the cutlery kerfuffle.

Nagurski initially told the principal that the knife in question was some kind of rounded steak knife. Later, though, he confessed that the knife was more serious. The actual knife Nagurski used had a sharp tip and a wooden handle, the principal said.

In the complaint filed with local police, the student who was at the business end of the knife said he felt "unsafe" and "scared." Bernalillo school district superintendent Allan Tapia accentuated the positive.

"Children were never in harm's way," the superintendent assured KRQE. "I've been in the district since 1996 and we've never ever had anything like this occur," Tapia added. "This is an isolated incident, and Bernalillo schools have great teachers."

School officials also noted that Nagurski was subjected to and passed a background check when he was hired.

Police booked Nagurski into the local jail on two charges: unlawfully carrying a deadly weapon on school premises and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

The teacher later posted a $10,000 bond and left the jail. He is currently on paid administrative leave.