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Official: Man who appeared on MTV's Catfish with criminal record spoke at Philly school

Published  May 3, 2018 11:08pm EDT
U.S.
FOX 29 Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) - Parents are upset and concerned that Philadelphia schools allowed a man to come in to talk to kids without properly checking out his background.

"Today, there was an individual that had no business being in one of our schools," Philadelphia School District spokesperson Lee Whack said.

You may have seen him on the MTV reality show "Catfish". But not recently after Jerez Coleman was sentenced to almost two years in prison in 2016. He was arrested for making hundreds of threats in Washington D.C., including bombings, snipers attacks, even to kill President Obama.

Just cleared from supervised release after a mental evaluation where does he end up? Philadelphia School District officials say this morning inside CAPA, which is the Creative and Performing Arts School on Broad Street, confirming to us, this was the man who spoke to two classrooms of student.

"The individual was in the school for approximately 30 minutes and spoke to approximately 60 students," Philadelphia School District spokesperson Lee Whack said.

Earlier in the day, the district says he called saying he was quote "D-J Silent Assassin", his nickname in some music circles and he wanted to inspire students.

"There was a member of our district staff who did not follow our typical policy and procedures when it come to permissions of visitors in our schools," Philadelphia School District spokesperson Lee Whack said.

He and an associate were given permission to enter the school. The district says at no time where they unsupervised, but during his presentation teachers had their doubts.

"It was just a sense where it didn't seem like everything was adding up and so from there--there was some additional checks into who this individual was," Philadelphia School District spokesperson Lee Whack said.

He left and no one was hurt. Police were eventually called. Parents thus far have not notified not even at Thursday's parent teacher meeting, according to one parent.

"This isn't just anybody getting into a school. This is a guy with a criminal record," FOX 29's Brad Sattin said. Whack replied, "We are fortunate that nothing worse happened. It's about redoubling our efforts to make sure that this type of thing does not happen again."

Whack says a letter is going out to parents Friday.