“Keep the kids safe. Just keep the kids safe. Do your job. Keep the kids safe.”

By Robert Mills
rmills@lowellsun.com
WESTFORD — The boy was met at the door by the smiling face of a freshman girl, working, as part of her studies, as a hostess for the restaurant and other student-run businesses at Nashoba Valley Technical High School.

The girl greeted the boy, asked where he was going, and received no answer. The boy silently walked down a hallway with an object that put the girl on edge.

“She didn’t know if it was a gun or a long pole, but she didn’t like the way he looked,” said Superintendent Judith Klimkiewicz.

The next four minutes would see police speeding toward the school, administrators scrambling, and dozens of students watching as their assistant principal faced off with what appeared to be a teen boy with a gun.

When the boy headed down the hall, the girl at the door immediately told an upperclassman and culinary instructor Steve Whiting.

Whiting notified Principal Denise Pigeon and Klimkiewicz, who was having lunch with Jim Campanini, editor of The Sun, and George Ramirez, executive vice president of MassDevelopment in the school’s restaurant, run by culinary arts students. Campanini and Ramirez were at the school to film Nashoba Talks, a monthly show prepared with help from students in the TV and Media Production program.

Klimkiewicz stood, told her guests she had to attend to something, and, still poised, walked away. Guests in the restaurant continued to eat lunch, unalarmed.

Westford police got a 911 call from the school at 11:48 a.m. yesterday, according to Capt. Walter Shea. Officers were told an “unwanted person” was inside the school. Moments later, as they were en route, officers were told that person was possibly armed.

The boy, carrying a pellet gun that closely resembled an assault rifle, had by then covered most of the roughly 90 feet of hallway leading to the school’s cafeteria, where about 150 students were eating.

“Ms. Pigeon came yelling to me that we had a situation,” said Assistant Principal Matthew Ricard. “She had already cleared the serving-line area out and said a young man was coming down the hallway.”

Pigeon ran to an office to place the school in lockdown and monitor video surveillance to be sure no one else was inside building.

“Every teacher who saw kids in the corridor just ushered them into a room and locked the door,” Klimkiewicz said.

Ricard saw the young man approaching the cafeteria, which was still not fully evacuated.

“I closed the café doors and tried not to let him into the café, but he did make his way in,” Ricard said. “I saw that he had a weapon in his hands.”

The young man pointed a gun in Ricard’s direction.

From left, Principal Denise Pigeon, Assistant Principal Matthew Ricard, Superintendent Judith Klimkiewicz, and Police Chief Thomas McEnaney.

Ricard was later asked what went through his head.

“Keep the kids safe. Just keep the kids safe. Do your job. Keep the kids safe,” Ricard said he was thinking.

The boy soon lowered the gun, and Ricard pinned the boy and the gun against a wall as four other teachers ran to help.

“He struggled,” Ricard said. “He didn’t say a word.”

There were still some students left in the cafeteria.

“They were frightened,” Klimkiewicz said.

Matthew Kamfonik and Mike Robichaud, teachers in the auto-body program, ran from a nearby teacher’s lounge to help, as did academic teachers Rob Beaudette and James Creed, who were working as lunch monitors.

Together with Ricard they pried the gun from the hands of the boy, and Ricard pinned the boy to the ground using an “arm bar” technique teachers are taught during annual restraint training.

Not even four minutes had passed.

“It all happened almost at once,” Klimkiewicz said.

Westford police were inside the school at 11:52 p.m., four minutes after they had been called.

They took the boy into custody without further incident. They determined the rifle was a pellet gun.

“When you look at this weapon it looks like an assault-type weapon,” said Westford Police Chief Thomas McEnaney. “It doesn’t look like a toy.”

A photograph of the gun that was provided by Westford Police.

Police soon identified the boy as a 16-year-old sophomore at the school who had been suspended last week due to what was described as an “unrelated” issue that did not involve weapons. The boy has been at the school for about a year.

Klimkiewicz and police declined to elaborate on the reason for the boy’s suspension, or to identify him in any other way since he is a juvenile facing criminal charges.

Police declined to speculate on his motive or what he may have been trying to do.

“He is not known to us,” McEnaney said when asked if the boy had a criminal record.

The boy was being held in an undisclosed juvenile detention facility last night. He will be arraigned today in Lowell Juvenile Court on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, carrying a dangerous weapon on school property, illegal possession of a BB gun, and disrupting a school assembly, McEnaney said.

Police searched the school to ensure there were no other threats, lifted the lockdown and sent students home on buses that were already waiting outside. Police searched the school a second time after students had been released.

Today, Klimkiewicz said, counselors will be available for students, staff and parents who have questions or concerns.

Klimkiewicz said she wishes the incident did not occur, but praised her staff and the freshman hostess for the speed with which they reacted. She said the student’s fast action kept the boy from moving further through the school.

“I think that says something about the maturity level of that young girl,” Klimkiewicz said.

McEnaney too praised the school staff, and Ricard in particular.

“He put himself in front of this individual who was carrying a weapon, and between him and the students,” McEnaney said. “He took matters into his own hands and actually disarmed this individual. For that I am very grateful.”

“I acted the way I was trained to act,” Ricard said.

Staff writer Sarah Favot contributed to this report.

New Home!

I’m so mainstream now!

This is the new site of the blog, on The Sun’s main URL. We also have new blogging software so please bear with me if I work out some kinks in how I do all this now.

The good news is that tonight has been slow, so I’m not leaping directly into the fire.

If you have the blog RSS’ed or bookmarked or something, please update your stuff. If you don’t have the blog bookmarked or RSS’ed, what the heck is wrong with you?

Rollover – OUI on Middlesex Street

Police got called to the area of 1853 Middlesex Street tonight about 10:35 p.m. for a reported rollover, and arrived to find what is pictured below.

Police say a Hyundai Tuscon driven by Christian Troix, 37, of Lowell, was outbound on Middlesex Street when it struck two parked cars and rolled onto its roof in the middle of Middlesex Street.
Troix and a passenger were both wearing seat belts, and were not injured.
Troix, though, was charged with operating under the influence of alcohol.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1570028818
I know Troix, and on a personal level this sucks, but I cannot, and will not keep something out of the paper just because I know someone or consider them a friend. I hope he and the friends we share understand that. I’m glad he at least wasn’t hurt.

Shut That ****ing Thing Off Before I Slap You

I’ve blogged before about videotaping police, and boy did I think I had a story this week when someone linked me to the video below.
Despite a late August ruling from the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals that largely ended any debate about whether it’s legal to make video and audio recordings of police in New England, a UMass Lowell Police officer threatened someone for videotaping him.
Student Brendan Brown, a junior, was leaving a friend’s house on University Avenue on Oct. 8 about 1 a.m. He noticed police breaking up a fight nearby.
Brown thought police were being a bit aggressive with some kids who were hurt, and so he stood back about 15 to 20 feet and started recording with his cell phone. He held the phone in front of his face, where it was clearly visible.
The video tells the next part of the story. Before you play it, though, be aware there is explicit language.

Brown tells me he was shocked. He grew up in Lynn with police all around, and was largely very thankful for their presence. This isn’t a kid who has a bone to pick with police. He’s studying Criminal Justice.
Brown took the threat seriously, stopped recording, put his phone in his pocket and walked back to his dorm. Then he uploaded the video.
“I thought it was something people should see,” he told me.
The university became aware of the video and UMass Lowell Police Chief Randy Brashears started an immediate investigation.
Brown met with Deputy Chief Ronald Dickerson, and told me the meeting went quite well. Brown could not identify the officer who made the remark, but Brashears told me the officer came forward on his own.
Instead of pushing back here and trying to claim, as Boston Police did, that it was legal for an officer to behave like this, Brashears sent me this email regarding the results of his investigation.
“The officer has been interviewed and his version was consistent with all of the witnesses, in that he admitted to making the thoughtless remark.
We will use this opportunity to not only retrain the officer but the entire department concerning the law over taping police in public.”
In light of the First Circuit’s opinion in Commonwealth V Glik, it’s pretty clear that as long as you have your recording device in plain sight and stay out of the way, it is legal to video and audio record police.
(Please note that hiding a recording device and recording in secret, however, is still a felony in Massachusetts, and that the SJC affirmed in 2001 that that law is constitutional).
This issue has been debated across the country, though, and continues to be debated in some places outside the First Circuit. It was really refreshing to see police respond to this so professionally, instead of circling the wagons.
Brown too sounded pretty happy about the results, and said he has no desire to see the officer fired for this. He hopes campus police simply follow whatever their protocol is for dealing with this type of incident.
When I spoke to him on Saturday, Brown said the student government was still planning to discuss this, but that he is pretty much just ready to get back to class.
I’ve gotta say, I’m kind of impressed all around here. Brown showed a very mature reaction by walking away from this situation instead of having a confrontation, and UMass Lowell Police responded to this in a serious way.
I think my primary concern at this point is that if all situations were handled like this the newspaper would run out of fodder. Thank goodness not everyone handles their business quite this well.
To read the entire ruling from the First Circuit in Commonwealth V Glik, just click here.
I didn’t want to make this entry too long, but the ruling was issued when officers involved in the Boston arrest tried to get the lawsuit against them dismissed. The court refused to do that, and those officers are now being sued, along with the city of Boston, in U.S. District Court.
The case is currently in discovery, and a trial date has not been set.
I should also note that I’ve been recording police for over three years now, and find that most of the time a video recording of events around the city is a benefit for police. I’ve also never had an officer ask or tell me to stop recording.
Knowing about this First Circuit opinion is also good for police, though, since the First Circuit ruling means officers can be personally liable if they wrongly arrest someone for recording them.
At this point, here in New England, only the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn this decision. The ruling has not been appealed.

“This is a real dangerous situation.”

Bill Ralls was smoking a cigarette when he heard a “whoosh,” a sound like the wind, and then looked toward the Massachusetts Mills apartments just in time to see a no-parking sign and a fire hydrant vanish.
“I saw the fire hydrant and the sign just drop into the ground,” Ralls told me tonight. “It was crazy. I couldn’t believe it.”
Ralls, who has lived in the building for about six years, walked toward where the hydrant and sign had been and saw a 2-foot-to-3-foot-wide hole in the ground. Then the ground collapsed even more.
“It started collapsing toward me, so I ran,” said Ralls, who lives on the second-floor, directly above the sinkhole.
After the second time the earth collapsed, the hole was substantially larger, so Ralls yelled for a neighbor to call 911.

Above is what the sinkhole looked like when I arrived. Notice the granite curb still in place. A few seconds after I took this, the ground in front of the guy in the background collapsed.
Needless to say that guy hustled back behind the police tape.
Police Lt. Thomas Siopes was among the first to arrive about 8 p.m. He urgently radioed for dispatchers to send the Fire and Water departments.
“This is a real dangerous situation,” Siopes said. “This is right up against the building.”
Firefighters arrived as the ground around the hole continued to collapse, soon sucking in large, granite curb stones and bricks from a sidewalk and fire lane. A chain fence in front of the building had already fallen in.
Firefighters used a sledge hammer to smash a metal cover over a water-shutoff valve nearby, but were unable to stop the water without a specialized tool.
By then, the hole was about 25 feet across, and Deputy Fire Chief Patrick McCabe ordered his men to move a ladder truck parked nearby. He wasn’t sure how much of the ground in the area had been washed out underneath.
Police put up crime-scene tape to keep residents away from the hole.

I should have been shooting video. Above you can see the splash from when the granite curb finally fell into the hole.
The loud sound of rushing water that filled the area stopped suddenly at 8:40 p.m., when Water Department workers used a long tool on the nearby water-shutoff valve. A round of applause arose from onlookers, most of whom had come out of the building.
McCabe said the entire ordeal had been caused by a break in a water line that is a mere 6 inches in diameter. The line broke between the hydrant and the nearby shutoff valve, he said.
The line provides water to nothing but the fire hydrant that had vanished, and therefore the break did not affect water service to the building.
McCabe consulted with Building Commissioner Robert Marsilia at the scene and said no residents would be forced out of the building since no water got inside the building, and since water and fire-protection systems that serve residents continued to function.

This is what the sinkhole looked like toward the end. I went inside to view the hole from Ralls’ apartment just above, and was in there when the water was finally shut off.
McCabe said many of the city’s mills have old tunnels running under them from the days when water was a primary power source. He said water from the broken line had apparently gone through one of those tunnels and under the building.
If not for the presence of those tunnels, McCabe said water from the broken line likely would have penetrated the building or shot up out of the ground.
The water likely hollowed out space in the area for a while before the ground above collapsed into the void.
“Considering what happened here, we’re pretty lucky,” McCabe said.
“Knowing you walked over that same area so many times is definitely scary,” said Andrew Sheehan, who has lived in the building for about two years.
Julia Malakie will have more photos, including shots from out Ralls’ window, in Wednesday’s paper.