Christina Formella recently married special ed teacher at Illinois’ Downers Grove South High School caught on bodycam video having crises reaction upon learning of her arrest and charges against her early March.
‘I’m, like, so scared….’ The married Illinois special education teacher accused of molesting one of her teen students was captured breaking down in heaving sobs after learning of the charges she faced, newly released bodycam footage of her arrest shows.
Christina Formella, 30, gasped for air and cried as she was placed in the back of a Downers Grove Police car on March 16, according to arrest footage published by the YouTube channel Ape Huncho.
‘Oh my God. What the f–k?’ Formella repeated, as the disbelieving educator cried into her cuffed hands with her knees pulled up to her chest, video shows.
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‘I feel like I’m gonna throw up,’ she said, as officers are seen rushing to find her a bag and towels in case she got sick.
Formella, a special education teacher at Downers Grove South High School, had just been detained over allegations that she molested a 15-year-old student she tutored and coached in soccer two years earlier.
The two allegedly exchanged illicit texts professing love for one another — including sharing explicit details about sex they had in a campus classroom.
‘I love you sooooo much baby… Even though this morning was short, it was perfect,’ Formella, who was 28 at the time, allegedly texted the boy.
Responded the teen victim, ‘I know baby I love it so much… It feels so good… It’s so passionate. .. It’s so intimate … It’s so perfect.’
Their texts were discovered days before her arrest as the boy’s mother was setting up a new phone for him — prompting him to confess the alleged relationship that he says he ended, and report it to police.
On the day of her arrest mid March, Formella was pulled over by police in her Chicago suburb as she was driving with her husband. Formella appeared confused (pay attention to the giant engagement ring she was wearing) when she was asked to step out of the car.
‘You can just grab whatever you need,’ a police officer said after confirming her identity.
‘Whatever I need?’ the discombobulated woman asked, while her confused husband asks, ‘Is she going somewhere?’
Kids, does it get any crazier? How could the husband have not known? Pay attention to the attempts at straight face.
‘Yeah, we’re going to explain everything to you,’ the officer (who by now has seen it all) responded, telling Formella that she was the subject of an investigation and needed to be taken to the station in handcuffs.
‘I’m, like, so scared,‘ (‘I’m so f busted. My life is ruined’) a clearly shocked Formella said as she was cuffed and then put in the back of a squad car.
‘Is my husband coming with?’ she said as the car drove off. ‘Am I in trouble? I am so lost right now,’ she (the dear in the headlights) added, while officers told her they could only say she was being detained for an investigation and that she’d learn more when she got to the police station.
During her interview with police, Formella claimed she was being blackmailed by her accuser — and insisted she was being targeted because she was ‘good-looking.’
‘She claimed that one day, [the boy] had grabbed her phone unattended, had entered her passcode … had sent the message to his phone, had then deleted the message from her phone, and had saved it to his phone as blackmail,’ according to court documents from her arrest.
‘[Formella said] everybody comes after her because she is good looking and she is just a good person who cared too much about [the boy],’ they added.
It remained unclear what motive the teen would have had in ‘blackmailing’ his then teacher, never mind how the 15 year boy having alleged access to the teacher’s private passcode.
Formella was charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault and was released on the condition that she not enter school grounds or have contact with anybody under 18.
Formella was also placed on paid leave from her job.
Wedding photos on social media show the educator and her husband — who was a student athlete with her at Concordia University — getting married as recently as August.
She had been teaching at Downers Grove High since 2020 and earned her teaching license in 2017.
