Due to an incident at his house in February, the principal of Enterprise High School in Redding has been charged with resisting a police officer and being drunk in public.
Ryan Johnson told the judge in Shasta County Superior Court on May 2 that he was not guilty of the charges against him. Jones, who is 47 years old, offered to take time off work after being arrested. The head of Shasta Union High School, Jim Cloney, said that the director had been sick for a week.
A Redding police report says that just before 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 22, Johnson was called to his home because he was reportedly standing in front of his ex-wife’s car and stopping her from driving away.
Johnson told the Record Searchlight that he had called the cops that night for help with a custody matter. There is a police report in Redding that says Johnson’s ex-wife left in her car with their daughter.
When the cops came to his house, they told him and his ex-wife to “disperse.” Johnson has been a director at Enterprise for nine years. He said he went into his house, but he was arrested when he went back outside to ask the police for more information.
“When he starts drinking, he doesn’t stop and gets angry,” Johnson’s current wife told cops about her husband’s drinking.
His present wife is mentioned in the report. “I asked her if he assaulted her, and she told me he did not. She hid from him while (Johnson) was arguing with his son,” the report says.
The officer wrote in a report that the man’s wife asked when he would be released from jail because she wanted to leave him because she was afraid for the safety of herself and her child. The story doesn’t say which child she was talking about.
Tammy Johnson, Johnson’s wife, told the Record Searchlight that the police report was wrong. She said she wasn’t hiding from her husband and wasn’t afraid he would hurt her or their kids.
Johnson told the Record Searchlight on Tuesday that he did not drink the whole bottle of rum and that the night he was arrested he did not hit anyone or make threats. One of his other children thought he was joking around with his 18-year-old son when he really meant they were fighting.
He said that he has not been charged or accused of battery against a woman. Police talked to Johnson’s wife and wrote a follow-up report. She told an officer that her husband had never attacked her.
“I guess my point is that I just want to make sure that’s made clear because I’m not violent and have never been accused of being violent. I’ve also never even come close to being violent, and it’s clear that the charges don’t reflect that.” Police say he was drunk, acting badly, and getting in the way of them, Johnson told the newspaper.
One person told cops A police report said Johnson was a “six or seven” on a scale from one to ten, where one means one drink and ten means very drunk. Johnson said that he wasn’t given a blood alcohol test the night he was jailed.
Johnson said he wasn’t resisting when police tried to put handcuffs on him, but the police said he was. He is very big; he is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 250 pounds. It was hard for him to put his arms behind his back.
Police took him to the Shasta County Jail after arresting him, where he was booked and then let go on his own promise, he said.
Johnson was asked if anyone brought up his arrest when he went back to work at school and what he thought students should learn from it. He said he had taken responsibility for what he did and tried to be open about what had happened.
“I’m responsible for what I do.” “I did it in public, and I’m going to keep going with the process like everyone else,” he said. “So if anything, I’d like to publicly thank my staff and students and parents for supporting me through this process,” he said.
Cloney said that he still stands by Johnson and that what Johnson is going through can teach kids something.
“I think Ryan did a good job of being honest with staff, students, and parents about what he was going through.” I think he took the initiative to say that he needed to work on some things, and I believe he is being honest when he says that.
“So I think, if anything, I would hope students would take away that obviously adults and people in their lives they see as mentors can certainly make mistakes, but how you respond to that is really the important part,” Cloney added.