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Leroy Truth Investigations-SHOCKING: Help 11-Year-Old Get Justice: Arrested After Asking for Help!
www.texasobserver.org /why-was-this-11-year-old-honor-roll-student-put-in-solitary/
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Why Was This 11-Year-Old Brownsville ISD Honor Student Put in Solitary For Three Days?
Josephine Lee14-18 minutes 11/2/2023
Above: Honor Roll student Timothy Murray displays an award for grand champion of the Brownsville Independent School District Elementary Science Fair in November 2022.
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Eleven-year-old Timothy Murray has many trophies displayed in a row by the wall of his room. During a video call, he shows me what he’s won from science projects, chess competitions, and coding programs, and ends with the largest one in his collection—a three-tiered, star-studded trophy he won as grand champion of the Brownsville Independent School District Elementary Science Fair in November 2022. It seems almost as tall as his 4-foot-1-inch frame. He explains that the project measured safety factors when driving over the Golden Gate Bridge by changing variables of speed, mass, and the size of a vehicle.
It’s hard for me to keep up as Timothy speaks and gestures excitedly at his project’s colorful tri-fold board.
The project was the last one Timothy worked on with his father before his father died in April from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. His dad had been sick since Timothy was two, and family outings were often trips to the hospital. As his cancer spread, Timothy’s dad never tried to hide his sickness. Rather, he demystified the disease, explaining the causes and the symptoms, and preparing Timothy for his possible death.
Timothy says that because of his father, he wants to be an oncologist when he grows up, although his mom laughs about how everyone else thinks her son should be a lawyer since he likes to argue so much. His father taught him how to speak up and advocate for himself.
“My dad taught me what is wrong and right. Do this. Don’t do that. Finish projects as soon as I can. Because if I’m late, it can hurt my grades,” Timothy said. “My grades are very fragile right now: I have an 84 in spelling, the rest are in the 90s.”
Timothy and his father, also Timothy Murray, in front of the seashore at South Padre Island in November 2021
Timothy and his father, also named Timothy Murray, at South Padre Island in November 2021. His father passed away in April. Cortesía de Nadia Rincón.
But Timothy’s efforts to speak out and request counseling for himself at the start of his fifth-grade school year at Palm Grove Elementary School led to what the family calls retaliation by Palm Grove Elementary School Principal Myrta Garza.
On September 8, school administrators told Timothy—who had irked the principal with requests for counseling and for clarification on school dress code policies—that another student alleged that he made threats against Garza. Timothy denied the allegation, but Garza called law enforcement, who detained him and placed him in solitary confinement for three days at the Darrell B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center in Brownsville.
Cameron County prosecutors pushed for Class C felony charges of “terroristic threat” and argued for two more weeks of detention. Instead, Judge Adela Kowalski-Garza ordered a safety risk evaluation and conditional release home until his hearing November 8.
Juvenile justice experts interviewed by the Texas Observer say the Brownsville Independent School District and police seem to have violated state laws and other rules in Timothy’s case that are intended to protect such young children from excessive law enforcement actions. These include a law that requires a school to undergo a fact-based, systemic threat assessment involving the parent to determine if there is an imminent threat warranting a referral to law enforcement and a Texas Supreme Court order that prohibits the handcuffing and shackling of young children. State law allows a minor to be placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours; staff at the detention center told Rincon her son was further isolated for COVID precautions.
“This was the choice of the school to refer to law enforcement, the choice of the law enforcement to detain the child, the choice of the prosecutor to charge him and try to trump up the charges,” said Renuka Rege, policy advisor at Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that researches and advocates on many issues, including juvenile justice. “All of these things are failures in serving young kids.”
The Observer requested comment and information from Brownsville ISD Superintendent René Gutiérrez, district Police Chief Oscar Garcia, and Garza. We asked the district if officials had conducted a threat assessment, but the only response we received was from Director of Public Relations and Community Engagement Jason Moody, who wrote, “This case has been transferred to the Cameron County Juvenile Justice Department and is pending adjudication.
#police #arrested #school
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