Kevin Bean is a 36-year-old teacher at Spring-Ford Intermediate School in Boyertown who teaches fifth and sixth graders and spends his free time wrestling for the World Wide Wrestling Alliance under the persona "Blitzkrieg." He is listed as a "superstar" on the wrestling website, and videos of Bean as Blitzkrieg have been showing up online since 2012.
In a video shared July 18 by Ryan Satin, an author at wrestling website Pro Wrestling Sheet, Bean can be seen carrying a German Iron Cross flag, making Nazi salutes and shouting "Sieg Heil," a common chant at political rallies in Nazi Germany, while walking into a wrestling ring.
"This video makes me sick. Watching the guy do Nazi salutes on his way to the ring while children in the crowd cheer him on like a good guy is terrifying," Satin captioned the video.
According to Dino Sanna, the owner of the World Wide Wrestling Alliance, Bean is a "good guy and not a hateful person," who has very close ties to his local church. Sanna also claims that many of the cheering children in the crowd were actually Bean's students.
"Everyone has a gimmick; it's wrestling," Sanna told The Blast last week, adding that no one has ever complained about Bean's persona before — and in fact, Bean's persona is supposed to be a bad guy. In professional wrestling, which is scripted, a "heel" is a wrestler who personifies a villain and fights against the "face" or the "good guy" wrestler. According to Sanna, Bean is a popular "heel" in the World Wide Wrestling Alliance.
According to the Spring-Ford Area School District's website, Bean has been an employee of the district since 2004.
In a Tuesday statement to the New York Post, school officials said that they are aware of the video and are currently conducting an internal investigation.
"The actions portrayed in this video do not represent the core values of the school district," the statement read. "As an educational organization, we pride ourselves in providing a safe and nurturing learning environment."
The Nazi salute, which was banned in Germany after World War II, is a greeting gesture that was used to express obedience to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.