| ||||
|
|
||||
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Reporting possible threat leads to legal woes for one child
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- In the wake of recent school shootings, school officials across the nation are urging students to come forward with any information about possible threats. But the experience of the Tapia family of Lancaster, California, may give any potential informant pause. Shortly after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, Kristina Tapia told officials at Quartz Hill High, where she was then a freshman, that she had overheard a classmate make a threat -- which she took seriously.
"I was sitting right behind a boy," said Tapia in an interview with CNN with her parents at her side. "He said, 'we're sick of people...want to kill them.' " Tapia -- who has since transferred to another school in the Antelope Valley, north of Los Angeles -- says the boy threatened her after he learned what she had told school authorities. "He said, 'I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get you,'" Tapia said. In his first interview since this incident, 17-year-old David Belisle denies he threatened anyone. But, he says, his life has been ruined by Tapia's accusations. He says he can't go anywhere without people pointing fingers saying things like "there goes the bomb boy" or "there goes the terrorist." After the school notified the county sheriff's office, David and another student were arrested. David was eventually expelled by the school and given six months' probation by a juvenile court. For the Tapia family, their legal nightmare was just beginning. The Belisle family felt David was denied due process -- by the school and the juvenile court system. "I feel the school should have done a better investigation," said David's mother, Tammy, while holding her son's hand during an interview at their home. The Los Angeles County Office of Education apparently agreed, following an appeal of the expulsion by the Belisle family. In a sharp rebuke to its own school district, the board's administrative hearing panel voted 4-0 to reverse David's expulsion. In its report, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, the panel cited "insufficient evidence" to establish that David Belisle had ever threatened anyone. And, David's parents say he never actually entered a plea in the court proceeding, and that as a juvenile he didn't have to. David's records have been sealed by the court making that claim nearly impossible to verify. 
The Belisle family then sued the Tapias for slander and defamation of character, among other things. "That totally floored me," Kristinia Tapia's mother, Kim, said. "Here my daughter had done what the school administrators and everybody had asked her to do, and now we're being sued for slander." The Tapias tried and failed to get the school district to pick up their legal tab -- a court nixed that. And so now, the Tapias owe their lawyers about $40,000 in legal fees with little hope of ever recouping their losses. Bridget Cook, the general counsel for the Antelope Valley High School Union District, says she sympathizes with the financial plight of the Tapia family but insists that the district is not responsible for the family's legal debt. "The courts have agreed with that position," Cook said. In an effort to make sure this sort of thing is unlikely to happen again in California, a school tipster immunity bill is making its way through the state legislature. If passed, it would shield people like the Tapias from civil litigation and would apparently be the first such law in the nation to do so.
RELATED STORIES: Boston school an urban oasis for students RELATED SITES: Quartz Hill High School | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
