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A former US police officer has revealed how she was determined to stand up to young yobs who threatened to kill and rape her because of fears that British society is facing a disciplinary breakdown similar to what she witnessed while patrolling some of the toughest areas of Louisiana.
Angela Flynn’s husband Michael Flynn was sacked from his teaching job after posting about the incident on Facebook which took place when the youngsters attempted to steal a bike from their front garden.
Ms Flynn, 52, told MailOnline that she came rushing out of her home in Gillingham, Kent to confront the yobs, with one claiming that he had a knife and would return with other people to ‘murder and rape her.’
She said: ‘I wasn’t going to take that lying down so I said to him: “If you’ve got a knife, I hope you know how to use it because you’re going to need it.”
‘During my police career, I was involved in shootouts and other terrifying incidents. I’ve seen and experienced a lot, and I wasn’t going to let a snotty ten-year-old in Kent intimidate me. So, I shouted at them to get off my property, started walking towards them and then these kids ran off.’
Angela Flynn’s husband Michael Flynn was sacked from his teaching job after posting about the incident on Facebook which took place when the youngsters attempted to steal a bike from their front garden
Ms Flynn has revealed how she was determined to stand up to young yobs who threatened to kill and rape her and her daughter
Mr Flynn, 52, allegedly broke his school’s social media policy by posting online
Mr Flynn took to Facebook after the first alleged incident on May 23
Ms Flynn revealed that she followed the youngsters to a local park and attempted to find out who the parents of the one threatening her were so that she could alert them but was unable to establish their identity.
The following day, May 24 the same youngster returned to her home with other friends and was about to hurl a brick through a window. He dropped it after Mr Flynn, 55 looked out and realised that it was one of his pupils, aged 10.
Mr Flynn was subsequently sacked from his job at Twydall Primary School for breaching its social media policy and safeguarding issues.
But Ms Flynn raged: ‘If a child steals a bike because he does not want to work for it and the school enables that child by sacking the teacher, then what message are you sending out?
‘I saw what happened in America with the way youngsters were allowed to get away with bad behaviour and sadly, Britain is now heading that way. Kids are becoming ungovernable, anti-social behaviour is increasing and parents can’t say anything, and schools don’t act to stop it.’
She added: ‘I stood up to these youngsters because I don’t want what’s happened in America to happen here. I love this country, it’s my adopted home and I want us to get a handle on what values we instil in our young people and how we want them to behave. If we don’t, Britain will be in the same position as the US.’
Ms Flynn shared her heart-warming story with MailOnline, which saw her go from being born and raised on a farm in Louisiana to Kent, where she lives in an assisted living community with Mr Flynn and her daughter Alexis, 20 who needs 24-hour care after she was paralysed from the neck down in a diving accident four years ago.
The former police officer has three older brothers and was raised by her mother and grandfather in rural Louisiana after tragically losing her father in an accident two months before she was born.
During her time in the police, Ms Flynn was based in the city of Natchitoches, which is located just outside New Orleans and carried out a number of roles from patrolling high crime areas, commanding its animal cruelty investigation unit and being a traffic cop.
At the same time, she ran her own horse farm which specialised in working with vulnerable youngsters. Before joining the force at the age of 28 she was a competitive horse rider but had to quit after sustaining a knee injury.
She said: ‘I’ve got a lot of experience of working with animals and vulnerable youngsters. When I chased after this kid who threatened me, I wanted his parents to know about what he was getting up to because that would be key to rehabilitating him along with the school taking appropriate action.
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During her time in the police, Ms Flynn was based in the city of Natchitoches, which is located just outside New Orleans and carried out a number of roles from patrolling high crime areas, commanding its animal cruelty investigation unit and being a traffic cop
His former employer, Twydall Primary School in Gillingham (pictured)
‘It was Michael who informed the school about what happened, and I was expecting them to intervene to remove this child from the class and work with him. But instead, they ended up sacking Michael, which is a disgraceful thing to do.’
Ms Flynn, who has four other children from a previous marriage and seven grandchildren, all of whom live in the US, met her husband online in 2019. He was living and working in Spain at the time.
By this stage, she had quit the force and moved to a remote home in Arkansas in the Ozark mountains with Alexis.
She said: ‘We were living our dream life in the middle of the woods and would go off hiking together for three or four days and do other wonderful things in the great outdoors.
‘I’m a country girl at heart and was happy to leave the force intact because I saw a lot of horrible things and how unjust the world could be. It was great to get away from it all with Alexis. She’s the love of my life, I’m a very devoted mother and I loved the fact that it was just the two of us in the middle of all this beautiful nature.’
Tragedy struck in 2020 when Alexis broke her neck after diving off the edge of a cliff and hitting the rocks. She had already been accepted into the US Marine Corps and had ambitions to become an FBI agent.
Alexis was dead for eight minutes and then spent the next five months in hospital, undergoing intense treatment. The injury has left her permanently disabled and unable to use her hands.
The yobs allegedly tried to take a bicycle from the front garden of his home in Gillingham, Kent. Mrs Flynn (left, with Mr Flynn on right) says she asked them to leave before one of them threatened to stab her and bring people who would rape her and murder the family
The couple say vulnerable neighbours in the assisted-living community are also worried about anti-social behaviour in the area. Michael and Angela Flynn are pictured together
Ms Flynn recalled: ‘It was an incredibly difficult time. I lived at the hospital with Alexis for the whole five months and was constantly by her side helping her to battle through this. Not only did she shatter her neck, but she sustained a life changing spinal cord injury.
‘Only five per cent of people survive this and Alexis is one of the lucky ones. She was set for a military career but her ultimate aim was to join the FBI. Our lives completely transformed after the accident because since then, my focus has been on caring for her.’
Ms Flynn has written a book about her life and caring for Alexis, titled: ‘The Significance of a Day.’ She estimates to have spent $300,000 on medical bills and is optimistic that advances in medical science will help her daughter to walk again one day.
Ms Flynn revealed that she first met Michael in person in late 2019 in Spain and knew immediately that he was the ‘love of my life.’
They married in April in April 2020 in Spain with Ms Flynn and Alexis moving to the country to live with him later that year.
Struggling to get Alexis appropriate help and with medical bills mounting, in September 2021 they relocated to Kent, where Mr Flynn is originally from and have been living in an assisted living community for the past six months in Twydall, a suburb of Gillingham.
She said: ‘I’ve been amazed at how kind, helpful and inviting people in Britain have been and I’m not going to let the actions of one delinquent change that.
‘Britain is still a very decent, caring country, not like America which is a society built on fear. And key to a good future are the youngsters. In my experience, crime is an evolutionary process and that has to be challenged. A ten-year-old might be trying to steal a bike today but tomorrow, he could be a 20-year-old who robs your home or steals your car.’
