Court Documents Reveal Details Of NHS Incident

By Andrew Gorosko

Court documents describe the details of an incident involving eight students at a Newtown High School (NHS) detention session last February, at which one of the youths was forcibly bound to a chair under layers of plastic wrap by the others, after which he toppled over and his head hit a tile floor, leaving him briefly unconscious.

The incident has resulted in the arrest of seven NHS students on charges including first-degree unlawful restraint, first-degree reckless endangerment, third-degree assault, second-degree threatening, and criminal conspiracy.

The students videotaped the incident, and then posted a video clip and a still image of the activity on the Internet, unwittingly creating a wealth of evidence for their prosecution.

Six of the seven youths whom police have arrested are under age 18, so their identities are shielded by state law. However, one of the youths whom police have arrested was age 18 when the incident occurred at a Saturday morning student detention session at the high school on February 9.

He is Matthew Cluff of 1 Smoke Rise Ridge, who police charged June 18 with first-degree unlawful restraint, first-degree reckless endangerment, and third-degree assault. Cluff is scheduled for a July 22 arraignment in Danbury Superior Court.

Of the other six people charged in the case, five are male youthful offenders, meaning they were 16 or 17 when the incident occurred, and one female was 15 years old, and thus is categorized as a juvenile. Their cases will be adjudicated in closed court.

Warrant

An arrest warrant affidavit submitted to the court by Domenic Costello, who was the police department’s school resource officer at the high school, describes the police investigation into the restraint case. First-degree unlawful restraint is a felony.

 On March 13, an unidentified female went to the police station and provided police with a picture that she had found on Facebook.com on the Internet. The Facebook account on which the photo had been posted belonged to one of the youths accused in the case, according to the court papers.

 On March 14, police reported the matter to school officials who then started an investigation, interviewing the boy who had been pictured bound in the plastic wrap. The boy initially did not want to discuss the matter and denied that it had taken place. The boy told school officials that he feared retaliation by the other youths for “snitching.”

Through their investigation, police learned that the youths had placed the restrained victim atop a dolly that was then rolled down a hallway, after which the chair fell off the dolly, causing the victim to strike his head on a tile floor, rendering him unconscious for approximately 20 seconds, according to the court papers.

“[The victim] never sought medical treatment out of fear that his parents would find out about the events that occurred and report it to school officials,” according to court documents.

On May 1, the victim provided police with a written statement about what had occurred in February.

The victim and the seven others were at the high school on February 9 for a work detail assigned to them for infractions of school rules.

The victim said he was sitting in the janitor’s room watching television when one of the male youths came up to him from behind and placed him in a chokehold and held him to a chair as Cluff then started to bind him to the chair with layers of plastic wrap. The victim told police he attempted to stand up but the boy who had put him in a chokehold punched him in the head and told him that if he moved, matters would get worse for him.

The 15-year-old girl then began to record the incident in which the victim’s arms and legs were immobilized, the victim told police.

The youths then placed the bound victim on a dolly, which was pushed around. After being pushed down a hallway, the bound boy fell off the dolly, striking his head on the floor, becoming briefly unconscious, according to the court papers.

During their investigation, school officials learned that a video clip of the incident was posted on the YouTube.com Internet website. They provided a copy of the video to police.

Video Evidence

Officer Costello describes the video’s content in the affidavit.

The video showed the victim sitting on a chair in the school’s maintenance break room with the other males gathered about. It is unclear whether the victim was 16 or 17 at the time of the incident.

The girl used a video camera to make the recording and her voice could be heard urging Cluff to continue to wrap up the victim tightly, according to the court documents. The victim resisted the others’ efforts to restrain him, according to police.

The assailants used the plastic wrap to bind the victim’s arms, torso, and legs to the chair, after which the victim’s face was written on with a marking pen. Ice was placed down the back of his shirt. After the video ended, the youths placed the bound victim on the dolly.

Officer Costello said that when he interviewed one of the accused youths after the incident, the youth claimed that the victim had agreed to let the others bind him to a chair.

That accused youth also claimed that he was unaware of anyone drawing on the victim’s face, after which Officer Costello told him that the YouTube video showed him putting the victim in a headlock in order to draw on the victim’s face.

Officer Costello stated that none of the six other youths accused in the case would speak to him in his investigation of the incident.

School Superintendent Janet Robinson said this week that after learning of February restraint incident from police in March, she was surprised to discover that the school had been using janitors to supervise the Saturday morning student detention sessions at the high school.

 The janitor who was overseeing the detention session was doing work elsewhere on the premises at the time the incident occurred, she said. Dr Robinson declined to discuss whether the school took any disciplinary action against the janitor.

Following the incident, the school reorganized the Saturday morning detention program to have a certified teacher oversee the students at the sessions, she said. “It’s a totally different atmosphere now,” she said.

The students at such detention sessions now have a more structured environment in which they are asked to consider why they are the subject of such detention, she said.

“It’s smart for every school system to examine all their disciplinary procedures regularly,” she said, adding that the local schools are starting such a review.