SUWANEE, Ga. (AP) - A high school student was suspended after a teacher accused her of singing a threatening song in class.

Beth Ann Cox, 16, admits singing the song, which is a morbid spoof of ''On top of Ol' Smokey,'' but she denies any wrongdoing.

The lyrics that alarmed the teacher, Phil Carroll, were: ''On top of Ol' Smokey, all covered with blood, I shot my poor teacher with a .44 slug.''

She got a five-day suspension after singing to song to another student in her German class.

Cox, a junior at Peachtree Ridge High School, said she did not direct the song lyrics at the teacher.

''I'd had a song stuck in my head all day, like the tune of it,'' she said. ''So I was just humming the tune to myself. This kid in front of me asked me about the song. So I told him the words. I didn't say them loudly. I was just talking underneath my voice. But I was not blatantly saying it or singing it.''

The teacher did not talk to her about it in class on Friday, but the student was pulled out of another class a few hours later and asked by administrators why she had threatened the teacher. On Monday morning, she was suspended before she went to her first class.

Cox has had differences with the teacher in the past, her mother, Suzanne Cox, said.

''We are very upset. We feel that Dr. Carroll has some kind of a vendetta out for our daughter. And he used this to take a stand against her,'' Suzanne Cox said.

School administrators also told Beth Ann Cox they would revoke her permissive transfer, which means she would not be able to return to the school next year. Her parents said they had requested she go there rather than North Gwinnett High School, which two of her older brothers attended. Another one of her brothers is now a senior at Peachtree Ridge.

Sloan Roach, spokeswoman for the school district, defended the administrators' decision to suspend Cox because she had been interrupting the class.

''Any kind of classroom disruption, which obviously singing out loud in class would be, the school can take and should take disciplinary action, and in this case appropriate disciplinary action was taken,'' Roach said.

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Information from: Gwinnett Daily Post, www.gwinnettdailypost.com