Crime & Safety

Twenty Tense Minutes at Mohegan School Today for Dozens of Parents

Report of a parent with alcohol on their breath brings police, uninformed parents waiting

 

A report of a “parent with alcohol on their breath” at Mohegan Elementary School at dismissal time today left the parents of 35 to 50 children to wait in the school’s foyer, office and cafeteria for 20 minutes without any information until finally they were told the school was waiting for police to arrive.

“They told us nothing,” said the parent of a fourth grader. “It was like a mini-lockdown but they told us nothing for a while and parents were getting upset, some were getting loud. Then they told us we had to wait until the police came.”

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Interim principal Rosemary Payne confirmed that she did not speak to parents and said she wasn’t sure if anyone else had.

“It wasn’t a lockdown and I don’t know (if any staff) said anything to them. I wasn’t there. I was with the children,” Payne said.

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Payne said she chose to hold the parent pickup students and walkers in a line in the hallway until police arrived.

“We received a report, a suspicion of the smell of alcohol on a parent’s breath. We have an obligation …we contacted the proper authorities (the Montville Police Department) and (were) told to dismiss when police came. It wasn’t a lockdown. We chose to dismiss the buses and wait for the walkers and the (parent pick-up children) until police came. Maybe (the police officer) spoke to them.”

Officer Gregg Jacobson responded to the school.

A parent who spoke to Montville Patch on the condition her name not be used said Jacobson “was very calm and just asked us to be patient.”

Montville Police Resident State Trooper Sgt. Martin ‘Marty’ Martinez said Jacobson arrived, “took the individual into a private room” and administered a Breathalyzer. “There was no alcohol present,” Martinez said. “There was no arrest.”

The mother of the 9-year-old said while she can “understand why they did what they did, kind of, okay. But not telling us anything?”

“When the kids finally came out, some were crying, a little first grader or Kindergartener was crying. And my son said he thought there was a shooting."

She said he was referring to the shooting at Newtown. 


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