Police Make Seventh Arrest In NHS Restraint Case

By Andrew Gorosko

Police this week made a seventh and final arrest stemming from a February incident at Newtown High School in which a group of students allegedly forcibly bound another student to a chair with layers of plastic wrap, videotaped the incident, and then posted a video clip and a still image of the incident on the Internet.

The incident occurred on the morning of Saturday, February 9, when the eight youths were attending a school detention program for students who had violated school rules. The detention program is designed to have students clean up the school.

On July 1 at 8:10 pm, a girl, who was age 15 when the incident occurred, turned herself in at the police station and was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree unlawful restraint, conspiracy to commit first-degree reckless endangerment, and conspiracy to commit third-degree assault, police said.

The girl, who is now age 16, was charged as a juvenile because she was age 15 when the incident occurred, police said in a statement. State law shields the identities of people under age 18 who are charged with crimes. The dispositions of their court cases are similarly shielded from public disclosure.

After booking the arrest, police released the girl into the custody of her mother for a July 21 appearance in Danbury Juvenile Court.

The girl is the only one of the seven youths charged in the case who has criminal conspiracy counts lodged against her.

Charges against the six males arrested in the case include first-degree unlawful restraint, first-degree reckless endangerment, third-degree assault, and second-degree threatening. First-degree unlawful restraint is a felony.

Five of those six males are categorized as youthful offenders, meaning they were 16 or 17 years old when the incident occurred, resulting in their identities being shielded from public disclosure, as well as the results of their cases being shielded in Danbury Youthful Offender Court.

The first youth whom police charged in the case, however, was 18 when the incident occurred. He is Matthew Cluff of 1 Smoke Rise Ridge, who police charged on June 18 with first-degree unlawful restraint, first-degree reckless endangerment, and third-degree assault. He was released on a written promise to appear for arraignment in Danbury Superior Court. The arraignment, which initially had been scheduled for July 8, has been rescheduled to July 22.

On the morning of Saturday, February 9, the eight youths were attending a school detention program.

Members of the group allegedly used a roll of clear plastic wrap, which normally is used for packaging, to bind a 16-year-old boy to a chair against his will and videotaped the act, later posting a video clip of the incident on the YouTube website, and a still image from that video clip on the Facebook website.

The youths allegedly placed the victim, who was trapped on the chair, atop a dolly, and then wheeled the dolly down a hallway in the school. The chair toppled over and the victim fell onto the floor, receiving a head injury, which did not require a hospital visit, according to police. The assailants also wrote on the victim’s face with a marking pen, according to police.

Police said they learned of the incident when an unidentified person later provided them with a computer disk that contained the Facebook website image of the trapped youth.