GILROY
– The Gilroy High School special education teacher accused of
threatening bodily harm on one of his freshman students will not
face criminal charges after all.
GILROY – The Gilroy High School special education teacher accused of threatening bodily harm on one of his freshman students will not face criminal charges after all.
The district attorney’s office declined to file charges against first-year GHS teacher Tim Ossowski because the facts and circumstances presented in a police report taken Dec. 2 did not meet the criteria of a criminal threat, the district attorney’s office said.
“We have to look at his actual words, and then we have to look at whether the words were intended to be carried out into action,” Deputy District Attorney Mark Hood said. “We reviewed all the statements, and we could not conclude that a statement was made that was intended to be carried out.”
Ossowski, 56, was neither arrested nor charged in the matter and continues to teach at Gilroy High School. If he had been found guilty of the crime, Ossowski could have faced one year in county jail or state prison.
Ossowski could not be reached for comment before deadline.
The student, who remains unnamed because he is a minor, claimed that on Nov. 18, during a confrontation in class, Ossowski threatened him by saying, “If I had a child like you, I would take you out and shoot you,” according to a Gilroy police report filed by the child’s mother Carmen Munoz.
In the police report, a GHS teacher’s aide, Irene Day, corroborated the boy’s claims. However, Day felt that Ossowski made the threat out of frustration and meant no harm to the student, the police report states.
Day told police that “it is not unusual for (the student) to agitate Ossowski and get the last word in,” the police report states.
Elsewhere in the police report, Ossowski claims he had been threatened numerous times by the student in the past. Ossowski never reported the threats to school officials.
Munoz also says her son repeatedly was called “an idiot” by Ossowski in class. Her son battles general learning disabilities and needs one-on-one attention and specially structured curriculum in order to be successful at school. He no longer attends Ossowski’s class, but is still enrolled at GHS.
“I’m angry,” Munoz said Monday after learning about the district attorney’s decision. “I want the teacher fired, and I want a written apology from him. If a child would have made that threat to a teacher, it would have been taken a lot more seriously.”
Munoz said school officials had contacted her for a second meeting regarding the matter, but said a teachers’ union representative would have to be present if she wanted Ossowski there. A meeting has yet to be scheduled.
District and school officials could not be contacted for comment before deadline. Officials declined comment for a story earlier in December but said the matter was under investigation by the district.
Munoz says she and Ossowski have talked since the incident. On Dec. 11, Ossowski, Munoz and high school and district officials met to discuss the student’s individual education plan – a document written by the parent and the school that details goals for a special education student and specific methods used to reach those goals.
After that meeting, Munoz says the teacher verbally apologized for “embarrassing” himself and the school.
Ossowski admitted to police that he used the words “If I had a child like you, I’d take you out and shoot you.” According to his statement in the police report, Ossowski was attempting to read a poem in class and was disrupted by the student roughly a dozen times. He then said those words out of frustration, Ossowski says in the report.
After the incident, Ossowski wrote up a referral on the student for defiance and disruption in class and sent the boy to the discipline office.
