Dad threatens ‘citizen arrest,’ brings zip ties to Arizona school over COVID quarantine
State and county law in southern Arizona says that a student exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19 “must remain at home and be excluded from school and extra-curricular activities.”
The father of a student at Mesquite Elementary School disagreed with that policy. So he and two other men arrived at the school, video camera and zip ties in hand, to contest it. The son was also brought along.
School principal Diane Vargo and assistant principal Kirsten Bice met with the men, who recorded the conversation and posted it on Instagram.
“You are not allowed to quarantine students that aren’t sick,” one man told the principal in the video. “If you insist in this we will call and have you arrested. We are willing to make a citizen’s arrest if necessary.”
Vargo told the men the school was following protocol.
But they argued she was “breaking the law.”
Eventually, she asked them to leave.
“She did ask us to leave — well I am not leaving,” the child’s father said once the principal and assistant principal left the room.
Though the men kept saying they would arrest the principal, they did not and instead left the school grounds, KVOA reported. Tucson police later arrested one of them away from the school for trespassing on school property, a spokesperson from the Tucson Police Department told McClatchy News.
The 40-year-old man was cited and released, police said.
Vargo did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.
“Today was a tough day,” Vail Unified School District Superintendent John Carruth told The Washington Post. “One of the most powerful tools as adults is the behavior that we model to young people — and the behavior that was modeled today makes me really sad.”
