But Mark Decker, then vice principal of the school, never did because a fire drill and administrative duties intervened, Holmlund said.
Three days later, Justin Benoist and Frankie Nicolai III were found dead in a field near Benoist's home.
Now, Benoist's mother, Norma Fox, and Nicolai's parents, Frank Nicolai and Arlene Powell, are suing the Ronan School District, seeking as much as $1.7 million in damages and lost earnings for the boys' alcohol-related deaths. The trial may last until Friday.
The parents' attorneys assert that state law and school policy require parents be called as soon as possible after children are discovered gone from school without permission. That would have been shortly after 1:30 p.m. for Benoist and Nicolai.
“My stated procedure is that we do the utmost to make contact” with parents if children are truant, Holmlund said.
Holmlund said he could not speak to the intent of the Legislature or interpret state law, but school policy requires that parents of students who do not show up for class in the morning be called by 11 a.m. The policy does not clearly state that parents of students who leave without permission in the afternoon be notified before the end of the school day.
Holmlund said it's his strong preference that parents be notified anytime their students are not in school when they should be.
“We make our best attempts, but sometimes it doesn't happen,” he said.
Holmlund was testifying as a witness for the boys' parents, although he sat at the defense table with two Missoula attorneys who represent the school district.
The school's attendance clerk, Cheri Houle, testified Decker told her to make one of the calls and he would make the other.
Houle said she called the mother of one of the boys as asked, but the woman was not home. The mother, however, says she never received a message that her son had skipped school.
Later Monday afternoon, Benoist's mother testified she provided the best home she could for her children under difficult circumstances, including poverty, alcoholism and domestic abuse.
Fox acknowledged she was an alcoholic, that one of her sons had recently died in a fire because he had passed out drunk at a party and failed to smell the smoke, that none of her surviving children remained in her legal custody, and that Justin at age 11 already had a probation officer supervising him because of behavioral problems. She said he had painted on a church wall and inhaled gasoline for the intoxicating effect.
She said she knew she was on the verge of having her children removed from the home, and had told a school official, perhaps Decker, that the boy needed special attention and close supervision.
She said she was in Kalispell the afternoon the two boys skipped their classes. She was applying for a housing subsidy, then went shopping and later visited her sister in the mountains west of the city, arriving home about 10:30 p.m.
Her daughter, Leah, one year older than Justin at the time, had called on a cell phone to tell her Justin had not arrived home from school. Fox said she was not overly concerned; she assumed he was at a friend's house watching videos as he had been the night before when she reported him to police as a runaway because he had not returned home by 9 p.m.
But if the school had notified her promptly early that afternoon, she could have immediately returned to Ronan to look for her boy and perhaps save his life, she said.
In a videotaped deposition, her daughter, Leah, told lawyers that she herself couldn't remember much of what happened that afternoon or the subsequent weekend. She spent the weekend with a friend, apparently driving around and drinking, and didn't return home until Monday.
The girl acknowledged she told investigators in March 2004 that she had seen Justin in Ronan sometime that Friday afternoon and had called her mother when the boy didn't return home.
Fox insisted she had no knowledge of her son drinking alcohol at any time. In the “huffing” incident, she “chewed him out good” and told him never to do it again, she said.
“Justin was a happy-go-lucky boy. He loved life,” she said.
If you knew he was missing, would you have been there for him, her attorney asked.
“Yes,” Fox answered.
Do you blame Ronan School District for his death?
“Yes.”
Why?
“Because we didn't receive a phone call” that Justin had left school without permission, she said.
The trial has elicited national media interest. Members of a production crew from the Court TV cable channel stationed themselves in and out of the courtroom, using nine microphones, a video camera and five people, including two production trainees, to record the blow-by-blow action.
The tape may be aired sometime in April, said Michael Christian, senior field producer for Court TV.
Attorneys for both sides kept their voices low and addressed witnesses and each other politely, and some witness testimony was barely audible.
Judge Kim Christopher didn't have to raise her gavel once to respond to an objection from a lawyer or to stifle unseemly behavior from media representatives in attendance. In a three-page order from the judge, the media had been warned to be on their best behavior, and to dress neatly for court.
Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at jstromnes@missoulian.com
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)