Thursday, November 16, 2017
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Bond was set Wednesday at $15,000 for a woman accused of telling her son to “tear up” his school, the Mahoning County High School, which police said he tried to do.
Janicka Shuler, 30, of South Glenellen Avenue, was arraigned in municipal court before Magistrate Anthony Sertick on a charge of inciting violence, a third-degree felony.
City Prosecutor Dana Lantz said the charge is one she has rarely used, but she said she thought it was necessary because the case is “disturbing.”
A Mahoning County deputy sheriff who works security at the Mahoning County High School on Bryn Mawr Avenue on the city’s East Side wrote in a report that on Oct. 17, an 11-year-old student was having a bad day and asked for permission to speak to Shuler, who is his mother but does not have custody of him.
School officials had to ask the student’s caseworker at the Mahoning County Children Services Board, who gave approval as long as the conversation was in the principal’s office and was on speaker phone.
Reports said when Shuler got on the phone with her son, she told him “burn the school to the ground” and to “tear up the school.”
The student ran out of the office, swore at teachers, flipped over a trash can and said he would tear up the school, reports said. He was punching windows and trying to fight school staff before he was stopped.
Lantz asked for a $10,000 bond, saying that Shuler has failed to appear twice before in court in previous cases and that she fostered bad behavior.
“She put her son and school officials in danger by inciting this kind of behavior,” Lantz said.
Sertick instead set bond at $15,000.
“The incident report is, for a lack of a better word, disturbing,” Sertick said.
Lantz said Shuler was charged right away but she was not arrested until this week because police could not find her.