Former teacher admits to having sex with Ohio student 22 years ago
A beloved former CLEVELAND — Shaker Heights High School teacher has pleaded guilty to a felony charge stemming from a sexual relationship he had with a student 22 years ago.
Timothy Mitchell, 59, admitted to having sex with the student, then 17 years old, in 1995 and pleaded guilty earlier this month to endangering children, a third-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
Mitchell had originally been charged with sexual battery, also a third-degree felony, but prosecutors agreed to amend the charge to child endangering in exchange for Mitchell agreeing to surrender his teaching license.
The deal will allow Mitchell to avoid having to register as a sex offender.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 12.
Mitchell’s attorney, Kevin Spellacy, declined to comment on Monday.
Mitchell, a history teacher and the coordinator of the school’s the IB diploma program, was the subject of a May 2016 Plain Dealer Publishing Co. feature after his students hatched and carried a scheme to get Mitchell tickets to the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” and convinced the show’s creator and star, Lin Manuel Miranda, to meet Mitchell.
But his career came to an unceremonious halt less than a year later, when a former student came forward to Shaker Heights police and told them about the relationship she had with Mitchell 22 years earlier.
Mitchell, then 36 years old, was a teacher on June 7, 1995, when he took the student, a senior at the time, to a Cleveland Indians game, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Jeff Schnatter said. Mitchell bought the girl a beer at the game, then smoked marijuana with her after the game, Schnatter said.
Mitchell then took the girl to University Circle, parked near the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the two had sex outside in a park, Schnatter said.
The girl graduated from high school eight days later, Schnatter said.
The two also had sex at Mitchell’s apartment on June 19 of that year, but Mitchell wasn’t charged because she was no longer a student at the high school, Schnatter said.
Spellacy, his defense lawyer, was prepared to argue at trial that the girl wasn’t technically Mitchell’s student because she was off-campus completing a senior project at the time, Schnatter said.
Spellacy came to prosecutors and offered the plea agreement, which Schnatter said prosecutor’s took after the victim signed off.
Schnatter defended the deal, saying it will keep Mitchell out of a classroom and away from young students.
The victim decided to come forward in February after years of counseling, Schnatter said.
An Ohio father who tried to discipline his 6-year-old daughter by chasing her around in a clown mask has been charged after she ran screaming to a stranger’s apartment — prompting that neighbor to fire a gunshot into the air, police say.
The incident occurred just before 10 p.m. Saturday, when 25-year-old Vernon Barrett Jr. donned a clown mask and began chasing his young daughter outside their apartment in Boardman Township, a suburb of Youngstown.
It was supposed to be a prank, Barrett later told police, a way to get the child to behave without resorting to spanking. A police report did not specify why he was trying to discipline his daughter that day.
Instead, the frightened child ran to a female stranger’s car nearby, jumped inside and said she was being chased by a clown, police said. That woman later told police that the man wearing the clown mask pulled the child out of her car. Unsure of what was happening, the woman called 911. (“I don’t want to be named,” the witness told The Washington Post on Monday when reached by phone, “but I can tell you it scared the bejeezus out of me.”)
In the time it took officers to arrive, the child ran into the adjacent apartment of 48-year-old Dion Santiago, declared she was scared and asked whether she could stay there because a clown was chasing her, according to a police report.
“Santiago turned off the lights and looked out his apartment window and observed Barrett standing outside of the building with a clown mask on,” responding officer Joseph O’Grady wrote in his incident report. “... [Santiago] grabbed his firearm and fired a shot out of his window.”
When officers responded to the scene, Santiago and Barrett were yelling at each other — the former still standing at his window and the latter still wearing a clown mask — and the girl remained too afraid to come out, police said. The child was identified in the incident report only by her initials.
“I attempted to tell J.B. that it was okay and that it was her father,” O’Grady wrote. “However, J.B. ran into the back bedroom of the apartment.”
She eventually emerged after a woman in Santiago’s apartment escorted her out, police said. O’Grady wrote that he had to physically separate Barrett and Santiago and call for backup because the two neighbors were getting into a heated argument, with Barrett insisting that Santiago had fired his gun at him.
Barrett was charged with child endangerment and inducing panic; Santiago was charged with using weapons while intoxicated, police said. Both were released and were scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.
The child was placed in the custody of Barrett’s girlfriend while Barrett was detained, police said.
Barrett told officers that his daughter’s mother was in prison for child endangerment after she had stepped on the child and broken several of her ribs, according to the incident report.
“Barrett said due to this he cannot discipline his daughter and reported they have been having behavior problems with J.B. at school and home,” the report stated. “Barrett said that he decided to use the clown mask into scaring her to behave” but that the “prank” got out of hand.
Santiago, meanwhile, defended his actions to police, saying he was with his family when the 6-yearold burst into their apartment and startled them.
“Santiago’s son [redacted] spoke to officers and provided a written statement and said due to the news and Internet coverage of people dressed as clowns chasing people he got nervous and scared when he looked outside the window and saw a man with a clown mask on,” the police report stated.
Around this time last year, several creepy clown sightings were reported nationwide, sending some communities into panic and even prompting a school to shut down.