YPD investigating possible poisoning of a teacher

By Joe Gorman

jgorman@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Police are investigating after a teacher at Volney Rogers Middle School became ill Friday and it was revealed a student may have put cleaning chemicals into her coffee.

School officials and police also were dealing Monday with a 14-year-old Chaney High School student who was arrested on a second-degree felony charge of inducing panic after reports said he threatened online to shoot up the school and then kill himself. The boy was taken to the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center.

In the Volney Rogers case, police Lt. Ramon Cox, head of the department’s Family Services Unit, said no charges have been filed. He said the contents of the teacher’s coffee cup as well as a bottle of cleaning chemicals next to her cup have been sent to a lab to be tested.

Reports list a 15-year-old male student as a suspect.

A deputy with the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office working security at Volney Rogers said in a report that he was approached about 12:50 p.m. Friday by another teacher, who said a student approached her and told her that the suspect poured bleach into the teacher’s coffee cup during the first-period class of the day.

Reports said a spray bottle normally filled with chemicals was on the teacher’s desk with the cap removed. The victim told the deputy she had been drinking from a 20-ounce cup of iced coffee throughout the morning and was experiencing flulike symptoms. A check by the school nurse revealed her blood pressure to be high.

The teacher went to the emergency room of a local hospital and no ill effects were found after an examination, said school spokeswoman Denise Dick. The teacher was back at work Monday, Dick said.

The student denied doing anything to the teacher’s drink. The student is suspended for the rest of the year, but not because of this incident, Dick said.

At Chaney, police were called at 7 a.m. by the principal after he was informed that the eighth-grade student made the threat against the school online and sent the threats to his mother.

Reports said the student was on the way to school with his grandmother when police contacted her and arranged a place where police could meet her and take the boy into custody. Reports said he was heard saying, “I shouldn’t have posted that.”

A statement from the school district said the situation was resolved swiftly and no students were ever in any danger. All parents were notified, and the statement also thanked the police department for their response and help.