Trial begins for teacher charged with choking 1st graders

As a first-grade teacher, Susan L. Burke was supposed to teach her students at Greencastle Elementary School reading and math. Instead, she brutally assaulted several of them, according to Montgomery County prosecutors.

Burke choked her 6- and 7-year-old students to discipline them, including grabbing one’s neck “with such force that he was unable to breath,” prosecutor Ryan Wechsler told the jury during her opening statement.