Nearly a dozen students at a Las Vegas elementary school reported to police that their teacher turned all the lights off in his classroom, pointed a bread knife at students and pretended to stab them, according to a report released Tuesday.
Kha Nam Nguyen, who was arrested on Friday on child abuse-related charges, is also accused of inappropriately touching girls’ faces, hair, and hands, as well as assigning students to date one another, his arrest report said.
Sometimes, police said, he would turn off the classroom lights in a game he called “knife tag,” while he grabbed the large and serrated knife from a cabinet.
“Nguyen would then say something along the lines of ‘You guys better start running because I’m going to go around the classroom with the knife,’” one student told police.
In another game called “Teddy Bear,” the 51-year-old teacher would pretend to cry and hug students for comfort, according to Clark County School District Police.
At the time of his arrest, Nguyen was teaching fifth grade and previously taught third grade at Fong Elementary School, the report said. He has worked for CCSD since 2007, police said.
CCSD police said they began investigating Nguyen in late February and initially identified at least seven students who were victims of his misconduct. Students — and school staff, who either reported or took reports about the behavior — told police that Nguyen had also used inappropriate language while teaching the children, including saying phrases like “making it rain” and calling women gold diggers.
“On multiple occasions, Nguyen asked the students if they wanted to play ‘knife tag,’ asked female students if they had boyfriends, and told boys not to get married as girls only want money,” one of Nguyen’s colleagues said in the report.
A couple of students said they thought “knife tag” was a joke, while others reported being scared of Nguyen, who they described as sometimes violent and having a temper, police said.
Students also said that Nguyen regularly screamed at them and slammed his hand on their desks when they got answers wrong in class. One time, he flipped a student’s desk and threw a notebook at him, a student said in the report. Another student reported being “fearful of Nguyen and did not want him to come back to the school,” the report said.
Police also said Nguyen had made unwelcome advances on a colleague, once gifting a woman an expensive Chanel perfume for Teacher Appreciation Week in front of students. An ID card belonging to that woman, along with a staff photograph of a woman Nguyen claimed was a teacher from a previous school year, was found inside his desk, police said.
When interviewed by school police, Nguyen said he had been performing the acts for years to entertain students and build rapport, according to the report.
Nguyen told police that, in hindsight, he could “see why some of his actions were weird.”
A statement from CCSD police said that Nguyen had been “assigned to home” pending the investigation. As of Tuesday, he was no longer listed as a staff member on Fong Elementary’s website.
Court records showed that Nguyen was still in custody, but a judge set his bail at $15,000, with additional conditions, including electronic monitoring and staying away from the school and children.
Contact Akiya Dillon at adillon@reviewjournal.com.
