WORCESTER, Mass. – A gym teacher at Rice Square Elementary School was hauled by police to the hospital after students allege he stripped off all his clothes and ran around the school Tuesday.

“Knowing that a naked guy coming at me is threatening me is kind of scary,” 12-year-old Marco Girardi told WHDH.

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Girardi was playing basketball with his friends Tuesday afternoon when he said his former gym teacher appeared by a fence and started shouting at them.

“He was against the pole and he was naked yelling at us, like ‘I’m going to get you one day. Why didn’t you watch these children’ and stuff,” Girardi said.

The student called 911 and his father, who lives nearby and came outside to see the man pull off his pants and bolt down the road.

“He was banging on windows,” Franco Girardi told the news site. “People were driving, trying to avoid him.”

The father said he briefly chased the man, who ran a loop around a local pharmacy and bank before dashing off.

“He ran into traffic,” Worcester School District safety liaison Robert Pezzella told the Boston Herald. “He stopped cars and was hitting vehicles, we were told by parents.”

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The incident occurred around the time school let out, and dismissal was delayed during the disruption, but Pezzella said the school’s principal first received reports about the teacher’s odd behavior around 1 p.m.

“He was making comments, saying he was sorry, behaving erratically,” Pezzella said.

For some reason, the Herald neglected to mention that the teacher stripped naked.

Pezzella told WHDH “eventually that staff member did leave school property and further down the road he was apprehended by the Worcester Police Department.”

Rice Square Elementary students said the streaking teacher, who was not identified in media reports or by police, caused quite a commotion.

“My friend came running in the room and said there was somebody running around the school naked and the teacher got really confused for a second and then we heard we were going into lockdown,” fifth-grader Gianna Genereli said.

School officials sent parents a phone message about the delayed dismissal that said a staff member had a “mental episode” and “became very agitated and volatile.”

“It’s a little disturbing to find out it’s a teacher,” Franco Girardi said. “You send your kids to school and you want them to be safe. I don’t know what the circumstances are, but it’s disturbing.”

Worcester Police Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst told The Boston Globe police did not arrest the man, but rather took him to a hospital for an evaluation.

District officials ignored the Globe’s calls for comment.