Randall Hunt, an Indian River County School District employee who was involved in a racially-motivated disturbance and charged with assaulting a police officer outside a Maine bar earlier this summer, has been placed on leave through Dec. 6.
The Indian River County School Board approved the recommendation by Interim Superintendent Susan Moxley at its Sept. 24 Board meeting. The school district has the authority to require troubled employees to complete special programs, such as drug and/or alcohol rehabilitation and cultural awareness and sensitivity training before they are allowed to return to work, school officials said. But administrators could not confirm if either of those requirements apply to Hunt because of privacy rights.
Hunt, 54, who works in the Exceptional Student Education Department as a program specialist for resource and transition services, could not be reached for comment. He has not been allowed on school grounds since his July 10 arrest, school administrators have said.
“We take this very seriously and will follow School Board policy and state statutes as they apply,” Moxley said in a statement after Hunt’s arrest.
Moxley declined further comment on Hunt’s job status, because legally, school officials cannot discuss specific personnel issues.
According to Portland Police Lt. Robert Martin, Hunt was arrested after police twice responded to late night calls regarding a “verbal altercation” instigated by the vacationing Floridian and involving a bartender and another patron at the American Legion Post bar on Peaks Island, off the coast of Portland.
Police were initially called to the bar at 11:50 p.m. on July 9, Martin said, but Hunt had already left the premises before they arrived. Police were called again when Hunt returned.
“We received a second complaint about the same gentleman,” Martin said. “When we returned and tried to talk to him, he shoved an officer. That’s when he was arrested.”
According to police reports, a bartender ordered Hunt to leave after he made inappropriate racial comments about a black patron in the bar. Hunt left the bar after initially refusing, but returned a short time later “highly intoxicated,” and began pounding on the bar door.
