HENRY COUNTY, Ga.,None — A Henry County student was suspended over a counterfeit bill used to purchase candy from a teacher. The young woman said she didn’t know it was fake.
“I pray to God every day that this can get behind me," Tierra Payton said. "I've cried more than I could ever cry."
Last Tuesday, the Dutchtown High School junior said she gave one of her teachers a $10 bill. She was buying a candy bar from the instructor who was selling them as a fundraiser. She got the candy and her change and went to her next class.
But later, school officials called her to the office to tell her they believed the money she gave the teacher was counterfeit.
"I don’t have a money marker to determine. It's not that I knew. I'm more surprised than they are," Payton told Channel 2’s Eric Philips.
She said a day later when it was confirmed that the bill was fake, she was suspended, pending a Wednesday hearing.
A school representative sent Philips the school policy on this issue, which states that possessing, using, selling, buying, giving away, bartering or exchanging any counterfeit money is a section 3 offense, one level down from the most serious offenses and warrants suspension followed by a hearing.
"I don't think anyone, I don't care who it is, should be made to feel like they're a criminal before any trial or anything has gone on," Payton's aunt Cheryl Gardner said.
"And I shouldn't miss almost a week out of school because of something like this," Payton added.
She said her aunt gave her the $10 bill and that it came from a self-checkout machine at a home improvement store.
If found guilty, Payton faces expulsion and deferment to an alternative school.
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