Former LaFayette High principal arrested
Mike Culberson, the former principal of LaFayette High School, was arrested Sunday after a fight with a neighbor that included a revved truck engine, punches, a headlock and, finally, a rifle.
According to an incident report from the Walker County Sheriff’s Office, the argument began after Culberson drove by the home that backs up to his in Rock Spring around 5:30 p.m. Culberson said the noise of his truck was loud, making it sound like he was revving his engine.
But the teenager at the house, Nicholas
Berry, said Culberson actually stopped, stuck out his middle finger and yelled out curse words. (Culberson, who said Nicholas
Berry was his student when he was principal, denies this.) Berry relayed the story to his father, Art, and the two walked over to Culberson’s house.
In his Chevrolet Silverado, Culberson watched the two men approach and began to record a video on his cellphone. According to the incident report, the video shows Art Berry walk up to the truck, argue with Culberson and punch him in the face. His son tried to pull him away. At some point, Culberson said, Nicholas Berry grabbed his cellphone and ran to the backyard — which runs into the Berrys’ property.
There, a fight began. Culberson and Art Berry struggled, ending with Culberson on top, squeezing Art Berry into a wrestling-style headlock. Nicholas Berry said he then punched Culberson, hoping to jar loose his former principal’s hold on his father.
During that fight, Culberson began to record another video. An investigator later said you can hear Nicholas Berry yell for Culberson to get off his father, telling him that Art Berry can’t breathe. Culberson, in turn, told Nicholas Berry that his actions were justified — they were in his yard, after all. Culberson said he would let go of Art Berry as soon as he and his son left him alone.
As that was going on, Berry’s wife, Alexandria Berry, called 911 and retrieved a Ruger 10/22 from somewhere in the house. A dispatcher told her not to get the gun, but she later said to an officer that she felt she had to get the weapon. She never planned to shoot it, she said, but she was afraid, what with her husband in a headlock.
At any rate, according to the report, the officer arrived soon after, and the fight broke up. He said Alexandria Berry lifted her gun in a non-threatening manner.
“I am not a law professor,” Culberson said later, after reading his arrest report. “But if she carried a loaded weapon out into a neighborhood street, I don’t care if she’s holding it with her teeth. How can it be non-threatening?”
After the officer arrived, according to the report, Culberson collapsed. Paramedics and EMTs brought him to a local hospital. When doctors released him, Culberson went to the Walker County Jail. He thought he was going to provide an investigator with more information about what happened before the fight.
Instead, the sheriff’s office charged him and Art Berry with affray and disorderly conduct. Culberson criticized the sheriff’s office for relying on members of Art Berry’s family to provide details about what happened. He thinks about 10 neighbors witnessed parts of the fight.
“I’m frustrated and furious and feel I’ve been treated very unfairly,” he said Tuesday evening.
Earlier this year, the Walker County Board of Education declined to renew Culberson’s contract after months of friction between him and Superintendent Damon Raines. In particular, Culberson objected to a central office employee whom Raines had moved to LaFayette High School, asking her to serve a similar role to that of a guidance counselor. Specifically, the employee worked with students at risk of failing to graduate.
Culberson said he believed Raines was taking too much power away from the school’s other guidance counselors. He then wrote emails to the superintendent from addresses that belonged to those guidance counselors. Pretending to be them, he complained about the new central office employee.