A loyal listener notified Girard at Large Saturday morning of an incident that resulted in the arrests of six students in the Manchester School District for varying charges of assault in the past two weeks.
Girard at Large reviewed the material about the incident, including a conversation on a Facebook group administrated by Ward 10 School Board Member John Avard, and contacted the Manchester Police Department (MPD) to verify the information.
Following Girard at Large’s inquiry, the MPD released the following statement about the incident, which is published here as submitted:
On March 13, 2016 at approximately 10:00 PM Manchester Police Officers responded to the Elliot Hospital for a report of a juvenile with several significant but non-life threatening injuries sustained during an assault. The initial investigation revealed this juvenile was chased by a group of nine subjects to the rear of 162 South Main Street. Once at this location the nine subjects proceeded to assault this juvenile victim simultaneously. Manchester Juvenile Detectives conducted a thorough investigation leading to the arrest of six juveniles for crimes committed during this offense ranging from riot, 2nd degree assault, simple assault, criminal threatening, and reckless conduct. The investigation is ongoing and no further information will be released at this time.
Girard at Large has learned and confirmed that district administrators were aware of the arrests, that they did not notify members of the Board of School Committee.
Richard Girard, host of the Girard at Large Radio Show and at-Large member of the Board of School Committee, said he had received no information about these arrests from either the school administration or the MPD. In the conversation on social media page that was brought to our attention by a loyal listener, Girard posted:
“One would think that the administration would notify the school board of such things.”
Responding to Girard’s comments Avard, who allowed the post to be published on the Facebook page that he administers, wrote:
“The BOSC as a whole is not notified of anything through the conduct committee. In fact, the conduct committee only sees the cases that reach the final expulsion level. Anything short of that does not go to the committee. In the past, the administration would have notified us of arrests or any other notable event/activity on school property, regardless of where the situation originated. We need to return to that level of communication and more.”
Girard at Large has subsequently obtained information from which schools the students were arrested, but will not release the information at this time per MPD’S request as they are concerned it may compromise their ongoing investigation. However, we have learned that several, if not all, of those arrested are now detained at the youth detention facility in Manchester.
We will release further details as they become available.
We will release details as we are able.
