ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Channel 9 first broke the story at 11:00pm Tuesday of an Orange County teacher was arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot students and kill his principal.

Wednesday, some students and parents were so afraid for their safety that they left school.

Jerrold Gabriel is now out of jail. He's not allowed back on campus at West Orange High School, but he's still getting paid and Eyewitness News learned he has more arrests on his record.

Gabriel is technically out on "medical" leave. For now, he is still a district employee and school officials say his behavior was erratic enough to warrant paid time-off for mental health checks.

Students said the halls were abuzz Wednesday and Gabriel's threats were all anyone was talking about. Dismissal at the school may have been less crowded than usual Wednesday after Eyewitness News broke news that science teacher Jerrold Gabriel threatened violence on the school community.

Many students went home early Wednesday.

“Their parents came and picked them up. They were freaked out that he would come and get revenge or something like that,” student Jessica Crook said.

Investigators say faculty noticed Gabriel’s "odd" behavior, but reports say, on September 17, it escalated; Gabriel demanded that a particular student be allowed to take his class, allegedly shouting "he would take a gun and shoot any student that was ahead of him on the list.” Investigators said Gabriel even threatened to kill the principal.

Parents weren't told.

“Were they going to wait for something to happen before they do something about it?” questioned parent Lindy Crook.

“He was just weird. He was a weird teacher,” student Myasia Brownie said.

Brownie was in one of Gabriel's classes. She only noticed a tendency to "over-share."

“There's weird teachers, but most teachers don't talk about their personal life to students. That's just not what you do,” she said.

Gabriel is now on paid "medical" leave and can't be fired until the district completes its investigation. His salary will be part of the $20,000 a month the county pays out to teachers on leave.

Eyewitness News stopped by his home Wednesday where his landlord hadn't seen him recently.

“I don't know. I can't even know how many weeks [since I last saw him],” landlord Peggie Stevens said. “A couple of weeks, yeah.”

Gabriel bonded out of the Orange County jail on October 13.

Eyewitness News got a copy of another arrest report for Gabriel even after his blowup at the school. He was allegedly disrupting business at the University of Florida in Gainesville claiming to be a $70 billion donor and demanding to speak to university heads.