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Teacher's past gives few clues to present

The woman accused of trying to kill her ex-boyfriend has roots in Belle Glade and worked her way through USF.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published January 13, 2006

TAMPA - Betty Jean Johnson worked her way through classes at the University of South Florida and graduated in 2001, pledging to be a guiding force in the lives of students with disabilities.

"The children we teach are our precious angels," Johnson wrote in her application for a full-time teaching job in Hillsborough County. "As teachers, we need to place them under our wings and guide them in the path they should go."

But Thursday, the elementary school teacher who talked about choosing the right path remained in the county jail - accused of trying to kill her ex-boyfriend outside an east Tampa bar with help from three male friends from Belle Glade.

She faces charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery after investigators say she recruited the unidentified men to attack ex-boyfriend Tommie Lee Mathis, 33, at Gene's Bar early Saturday.

Police say that when Mathis walked out of Gene's, a N 22nd Street tavern, at 2:30 a.m., the three men confronted him. One started shooting. Mathis wasn't hit, but three bystanders were.

As Tampa police detectives worked to identify the three Belle Glade men, more details emerged about Johnson, 29, a Tampa special education teacher with roots in Belle Glade.

She graduated in 1994 from Glades Central High School in Belle Glade, a mostly poor, rural farming community in western Palm Beach County. By 1999, she was studying education at the University of South Florida and working as a receptionist at the Phyllis P. Marshall Center, the student union, according to her personnel file at the Hillsborough County school district.

She also worked at a North Tampa Wal-Mart for a few months in 2000 - the same year she filed a paternity suit against Vernon D. Kelley in Hillsborough County, court records show. Details of the suit could not be determined Thursday because the court file was in storage.

Johnson's teaching career in Hillsborough began in 1998, when she worked as a substitute. She became a kindergarten aide at Schwartzkopf Elementary in Lutz in January 2001.

In May 2001, Johnson graduated from USF with a bachelor's degree in special education - focusing on specific learning disabilities and behavior disorders. At the time, she was married to Darrel Engram, 37, of Tampa.

In August of 2001, she moved to Witter Elementary in Tampa as a teacher for emotionally handicapped children.

She moved to Cahoon Elementary in east Tampa in July 2002. School district spokeswoman Linda Cobbe said she teaches students in Grades 3-5 who have disabilities.

In a March 2001 evaluation for her first few months at Schwartzkopf Elementary, Johnson got high marks across the board and was praised for her "quickness and ease making a transition into the kindergarten setting."

It is unclear how long Johnson and Mathis dated, but Johnson divorced Darrel Engram in 2003, shortly after Johnson filed a domestic violence petition against Engram, court records show.

And when Hillsborough sheriff's deputies arrested Mathis in October on a petty theft charge, he listed his address as 2613 Pioneer Days Lane. That is the same address Johnson gave when booked into jail this week, though there is no record of that address in property records or local maps.

Mathis has a history of arrests dating back to 1993, and has been convicted of cocaine and marijuana possession, state records show.

Florida records list only Wednesday's arrest for Johnson.

She was not injured in Saturday's shootout, but three others were.

Levi Dukes, 37, was shot in the head and remains in fair condition at Tampa General Hospital. Darrell Simmons, 33, was shot in the torso. Police said Simmons was taken to TGH in critical condition.

Lewis Jackson, 28, was shot in his upper right leg and treated at St. Joseph's Hospital for the wound, which wasn't life-threatening.

After learning about the shooting, Tampa City Council member Kevin White on Thursday asked code enforcement and police officials to report back in two weeks on what is being done to clean up Gene's Bar.

The council had asked the departments last month to monitor the bar, after receiving complaints about its impact on the surrounding neighborhood.

Council member Rose Ferlita said she also wants a report on Club Envy, a bikini bar on Kennedy Boulevard that Gene's owner Eugene O'Steen opened in recent weeks.

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan and staff writers Rebecca Catalanello and Janet Zink contributed to this report. Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at svansickler@sptimes.com or 813 226-3373.

[Last modified January 13, 2006, 01:45:18]