GILROY
– The District Attorney’s Office filed charges Monday against
three 17-year-old Gilroy High School students arrested in
connection with a death threat on one of their teachers.
The two girls and one boy were scheduled for a juvenile
detention hearing this morning in San Jose, according to Deputy
District Attorney Kurt Kumli who is in charge of prosecuting
juveniles in Santa Clara County.
GILROY – The District Attorney’s Office filed charges Monday against three 17-year-old Gilroy High School students arrested in connection with a death threat on one of their teachers.
The two girls and one boy were scheduled for a juvenile detention hearing this morning in San Jose, according to Deputy District Attorney Kurt Kumli who is in charge of prosecuting juveniles in Santa Clara County.
The three have been in the county’s juvenile hall since Friday afternoon, Kumli said.
Police, prosecutors and court officials are withholding the students’ names because they are minors.
Kumli also withheld the charges against the students since they do not fall into the category of “serious or violent” offenses by juveniles that require disclosure under state law.
The boy and one of the girls are juniors at Gilroy High. The other girl is a sophomore.
Mani Corzo, the GHS assistant principal in charge of discipline, said he doubts the arrested students will return to the school this year. Nevertheless, he said he did not yet know what action school officials would take.
The prank, as Gilroy police described it, prompted heavily armed police to swarm the school and lock it down for nearly three hours Friday morning. During that time, no student or teacher was allowed to leave a classroom for any reason.
“Couple of my classmates had to go to the bathroom and used garbage cans,” GHS student Marisa Ceragioli said. “And everyone was hungry.”
City police had not yet added up the cost of this operation as of Monday afternoon, but they say they will do everything possible to force the students’ families to repay it and will encourage the California Highway Patrol, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and Gilroy Unified School District to do the same.
The lockdown involved more than 30 police officers, a CHP helicopter from Napa and CHP airplane from Paso Robles.
The arrested boy’s mother said she does not think she can afford to pay the expenses. The family rents their house and already are worried about being evicted, she said.
According to Gilroy police, the three defendants left school Friday morning by hitching a ride from a passing motorist. One of them stole the driver’s cellular phone on the way to McDonald’s at First Street and Wren Avenue. The driver reported the phone stolen to city police at 9:15 a.m.
After walking from McDonald’s to nearby Wienerschnitzel, police say one of the girls used the stolen phone to call 9-1-1 at 9:29 a.m. Masking her voice so she would sound like a male, she told a CHP dispatcher she had a gun and planned to shoot her cooking teacher, Diana Burkholder.
After hanging up, the girl called 9-1-1 a second time, police said. The CHP transferred her to a Gilroy police dispatcher, and she repeated the threat, saying she was at the school and was going to “bust a cap” on the teacher.
Gilroy police arrested the three students at 3:18 p.m. Friday in a house on Welburn Avenue where the boy lives with his family.
Peter Crowley covers public safety for The Dispatch. He can be reached at 842-6400 ext 285 or pc******@gi************.com.
