A Bartow County school board member under fire for allegedly ramming a teenager with her SUV in a dispute over a Walmart parking space has resigned.
Angela Cornett, 41, was arrested last Friday and charged with reckless conduct after she allegedly lurched into the 17-year-old teen standing in the parking space at a Cartersville Walmart holding it for a friend.
“She just felt it was in the best interest of her, her family and the school district,” her attorney John T. Mroczko told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Cornett’s resignation is effective immediately. Cornett had no other comment, Mroczko said.
Cornett claimed she didn’t intentionally ram the teen, but the incident — which has attracted national attention and local outrage — was caught on tape, and the store’s surveillance video convinced police to arrest Cornett.
The incident put tiny Bartow County in the national spotlight. The teen, Emily Gulledge, a senior at Adairsville High School, was interviewed on the Today Show and other media on Thursday morning, declaring that “I was the child in this incident, but she acted like a child.”
“It’s a pretty unusual story,” said WSB-TV news director Mike Dreaden “How often is a school board member arrested and accused of running into a teenager? That’s certainly why the story got our attention.”
Jessica Loeding, managing editor at the Daily Tribune News in Cartersville, said her paper had received “overwhelming blowback” from readers responding to stories about the incident. “It’s a very big deal here in Bartow County,” she said.
Cornett had already been under fire for comments she made during a school board meeting in September in which she spoke disparagingly about a former school system employee after naming the employee in the public meeting.
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