A mother’s plea She wants charges to be filed against Woodland Hills principal for threatening son
The mother of the 14-year-old Woodland Hills High School special needs student who recorded his principal threatening him said “it was heartbreaking” to hear the school official’s remarks.
But what Vernessa Hines said she’s lost sleep over was the fact that the Allegheny County district attorney declined to charge principal Kevin Murray with any crime.
“I want justice for my son, please. That’s all we’re asking for is justice,” said Ms. Hines, 32, at a news conference Wednesday night outside the Woodland Hills administration building. “I don’t want Murray in that school teaching or disciplining any other students. No student should be around Mr. Murray.”
Ms. Hines was joined by about 25 supporters protesting DA Stephen A. Zappala Jr.’s decision not to file charges against Mr. Murray. They also demanded that Mr. Zappala drop wiretapping charges against the 14-yearold student in an unrelated case.
Several of her supporters held signs containing messages such as “Stop criminalizing students with disabilities” and “DA Zappala, charge the abuser not the abused.”
“It’s a sad day when we have to gather and rally to ask the district attorney to use his discretion to not charge a child who has been a victim and who has a disability,” said Brandi Fisher,
president of the Alliance for Police Accountability. “I cannot fathom how any human being can find it in themselves to do what he is doing.”
Mike Manko, spokesman for the district attorney’s office, declined Wednesday to discuss the wiretapping case involving the 14-year-old student and added that the office would have no further comment on the decision not to charge Mr. Murray.
“The Pennsylvania Juvenile Act precludes us from commenting on any case involving juveniles,” Mr. Manko wrote in an email. “As for the principal, District Attorney Zappala has already made his reasoning quite clearly for why there will be no charges.”
When the DA’s office announced earlier this month that Mr. Murray would not be charged, Mr. Manko said in a statement, “The job of the District Attorney’s Office is to prosecute matters that are criminal in nature. If we believe that someone’s behavior is best addressed by other means, in this case a school board and school administration, we would defer to those bodies.”
Mr. Murray, who is in his second year as principal of the high school, was placed on paid leave Nov. 30 after an audio recording made in April surfaced. On it, Mr. Murray can be heard threatening to punch the student and telling him he would “knock his ... teeth down his throat.”
Mr. Murray had intervened after the teen was being “disrespectful” to a female employee at the school, according to the principal’s attorney, Phil DiLucente.
Later, Mr. Murray told the student that if the matter were to go to court, his word would be believed over the student’s “every time.”
The audio recording broke the state’s wiretapping law because Mr. Murray did not know he was being recorded, but the student was not charged then like he was after recording a conversation with a school counselor.
Mr. Murray has been reinstated as principal.