Threat charges against school custodian dismissed

WEST CHESTER » Terroristic threat charges against a former custodian in the UnionvilleChadds Ford School District have been dismissed after the two sides in the case agreed that what the man allegedly told co-workers about using a gun to make “a couple of people retire early” was likely taken out of context, if said at all.

Common Pleas Judge Anthony Sarcione on Wednesday agreed, albeit reluctantly, to approve the dismissal sought by the prosecution and defense in the case of

Rodney Rice, who was arrested last year after a fellow employee said Rice asked him if he could borrow a 9mm handgun and suggested he would use it against school officials who had passed him over for a promotion.

“I am a little hesitant” to accept the resolution sought by Deputy District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco and defense attorney Rashonda Holmes of Philadelphia, Sarcione said during the proceeding Wednesday. “In today’s violent world anything that can be even loosely considered threatening must be taken seriously,” especially in a school environment.

“We need to protect our kids,” Sarcione declared. The judge said he was concerned

because he had earlier heard a motion to dismiss the charges filed by Holmes, but found that indeed there was enough evidence to hold him on the charges of terroristic threats and disorderly conduct.

“Just the mere mention of bringing a weapon on school grounds is enough to raise alarms,” he said.

Ost-Prisco told the judge that his superiors in the District Attorney’s Office had approved of the proposed resolution, as had officials in the Unionville school district. He said he also believed that the state police trooper who filed the charges against Rice would go along with the disposition, although he had not spoken directly with him.

Holmes said that she had spoken with the school district’s solicitor, and that they had agreed to the charges against Rice being

dismissed. Rice, a military veteran who worked in janitorial services at the district for 15 years, has retired from his position in Unionville and is receiving a school pension.

Ost-Prisco said considerations for the dismissal included not only that the witnesses who had come forward with the initial complaint agreed they may have taken what Rice allegedly said “out of context,” and that Rice had not actually made any threats of violence directly to any particular individual. He said that Rice had never become violent in the incident, and had no past criminal record of any kind.

“We have never suggested that the person to whom the statements were directed should have felt threatened,” Ost-Prisco said.

For his part, Rice, 55, of Chester, Delaware County,

denied making the statements that were attributed to him. He told the judge that he was upset at the time at being passed over for promotion, but was not angry. He said he had never asked to borrow or buy a gun from a co-worker, as was stated in the criminal complaint. “I didn’t do it,” Rice said. Ost-Prisco, however, said that Rice could either accept that what he did say was taken incorrectly or maintain that he never said anything of the kind. “Either he didn’t make them or they were misconstrued,” the prosecutor said. “It can’t be both.”

The state Rules of Criminal Procedure allow charges to be dismissed if the “public interest will not be adversely affected,” the prosecution approves of the dismissal, and the victim in the case — that being the school district officials in this case

— are satisfied with the resolution. All three provisions were met, Ost-Prisco said.

According to the criminal complaint by state Trooper Alexander Talmadge and Sarcione’s ruling in the earlier hearing, police were called to the Charles F. Patton Middle School in East Marlborough around 5 p.m. on June 21, 2017. Talmadge met with Assistant Superintendent James Nolan who said that two employees had advised him of remarks that Rice had made in an apparent threat to Superintendent John Sanville, who had reportedly not given Rice a promotion he applied for.

According to one coworker, Rice approached him at lunch that day and asked he the man owned a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The co-worker said he had more than one, at which time Rice allegedly said, “good, I’d like to buy

it.” When asked why, Rice allegedly told the man, “I would like to have a couple of people retire early.”

The other co-worker confirmed that he had hear the exchange, and also heard Rice said that he had spoken to Sanville about being passed over and would not take it, “laying down.”

Sarcione, in his opinion upholding the prosecution’s case, said that if the co-workers were believed, Rice then “certainly made a threat to commit a crime of violence,” as is required in the statute. His statement about making people “retire early” is easily construed as a threat to commit either murder or aggravated assault.”

Rice had been free on bail pending trial since his arrest last June.