Parapro in biting incident had prior criminal history

Published 10:32 pm Thursday, March 20, 2008

A search of court and law enforcement records over the past week revealed that a former Len Lastinger paraprofessional suspended without pay for a week after biting a kindergarten-aged girl in January was convicted of harassment after being fired from Tifton’s R. L. Mack Head Start Center in November 1997. The Tifton Gazette was able to confirm Wednesday through a spokesperson at the Tift County Board of Education that Hightower is working at the system’s bus shop.

Mary Beth Tucker, who is now a childcare program specialist with the Department of Early Care and Learning (Bright from the Start), told the Gazette last week that Hightower, who went by the name of Vivian Collier and the nickname “Dee Dee” at the time, worked as a disabilities assistant at the center from October 1996 until Tucker fired her in November 1997.

Tucker said Hightower was assigned to one particular student at a time and worked with that student for four hours each day during her tenure at Head Start. After some months, she was hired in a permanent position as an assistant teacher.

“Her previous experience was that she had had her own home daycare,” Tucker said. “That’s how she got the part-time position as a disabilities assistant.”

When asked why Hightower (Collier) was fired, Tucker said that another teacher at Head Start witnessed her “pop a child on the hand” and told Tucker about the incident.

“Head Start has strict corporal punishment rules,” Tucker said. “That was an automatic termination. We got the information we needed to document together first and she was fired the next day or so.”

After Hightower (Collier) was fired, Tucker said she began harassing a teacher whose room she had worked in. That teacher, Robin Hiers, was not the teacher who witnessed the incident and reported it to Tucker, Tucker said, but the one that Hightower (Collier) thought had reported the incident to Tucker.

“She started harassing the teacher (Hiers) by coming back to the center and entering the door on the end of the building and coming in and talking with the staff,” Tucker said. “She also made harassing phone calls telling the teacher she had better watch her back and things like that.”

Tucker said that Hiers left Head Start one day after Collier was fired and noticed that Collier was in the parking lot. Tucker said Collier preceded to follow Hiers to her home in Cook County, Tucker said. Tucker’s recount of that incident wasn’t verified in court or law enforcement records searched.

Tucker said the human resources director at Coastal Plains EOA “advised us to take a warrant out for her harassing the teacher.”

“It was while the teacher was at work she would call,” Tucker said. “She would disguise her voice and ask to speak to the teacher and tell her, ‘you better watch your back.’ It was upsetting the teacher she was directing the harassment to.”

Hiers also reported on a TPD incident report dated Dec. 3, 1997, that Vivian Collier called “her place of employment and made unwanted statements” to her at 10 a.m. that day. Tucker reported to the Tifton Police Department, on a separate incident report dated Dec. 3, 1997, that at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 25, 1997, Vivian Collier came onto Head Start property without permission.

On Dec. 4, 1997, a State Warrant on charges of misdemeanor criminal trespass was issued and signed by then Magistrate Court of Tifton Judge Luann F. Deason based on the accusation that Vivian Collier “unlawfully entered the premises” of the Head Start Center “after receiving, prior to such entry, notice from Mary Beth Tucker, Director of R. L. Mack Head Start Center, that such entry was forbidden.” According to booking records at the TCSO, Vivian Abigail Collier was arrested on Dec. 6, 1997 and charged with criminal trespass and released on bond. On Feb. 27, 1998, according to court records, she entered a plea of not guilty to the charge. On June 30, 1998, then State Court Judge R. R. Buckley found Vivian Collier guilty and ordered her to serve a 12-month probated sentence and to pay $375 in fines for the offense.

The “Bond Record State Court Misdemeanor Docket” book at the TCSO showed that Collier (Hightower) was arrested and charged with making harassing telephone calls and that, upon that arrest, law enforcement officials learned that she had a warrant out on her for writing a bad check. Bond for her was set at $1,500 on the charges and she was released. Those records at the TCSO also show that on Dec. 3, 1997, Collier was booked on charges of criminal trespass and released on a $500 bond. It is unclear whether those bonds directly correspond with the Hiers and Tucker harass complaint cases.

Tucker said that the judge who presided over the harassment case told Collier (Hightower) that “he was putting her on a 12-month probation and if she didn’t stay off the property, he could put her in jail for 12 months.” According to the form “SENTENCE OF PROBATION” attached to the warrant in the Hiers case, then-presiding State Court Judge R.R. Buckley sentenced Vivian Collier to serve a 12-month probated sentence and ordered her to pay fines totaling $375. Collier was also ordered by Buckley to “avoid any and all contact with (or be on the property of) Robin Hiers for the term of probation.”

On April 15, 2006, Vivian Collier Hightower was arrested and charged by a deputy with the TCSO with aggravated assault. According to his report, a 23-year-old woman reported that at 8:15 p.m., the alleged victim and a witness “stated that the offender threatened the complainant with bodily harm and with a machete. The offender was still on the scene with the machete in her possession on arrival.” Hightower was released on $5,000 bond and ordered not to threaten physical harm or physically harm” the woman.

According to Capt. Mike Walker of the TCSO’s Criminal Investigation Division, the investigation by his department into the incident is complete and the investigative file in the case was turned over to District Attorney Paul Bowden’s office in April 2006. When asked if his office had been notified by Bowden’s that the case would not be prosecuted, Walker replied, “No, we have not been notified that it has been dismissed or will not be prosecuted.”