Hazing' under review: 4 JV baseball players suspended; school, police investigating [MLive.com]

Tuesday, May 29, 2007
By JEFFREY CUNNINGHAM

Ottawa County Sheriff's Department investigators and Coopersville school officials said late last week they were still sorting out what actually occurred in a May 18 hazing incident involving members of the Coopersville High School junior varsity baseball team.

What is clear is that four members of the junior varsity baseball team have been suspended from school for 10 days for an alleged assault on one or more players on the team.

The remaining games of the junior varsity baseball team's season have also been cancelled. The coach has resigned, school officials are currently investigating the incident, and a detective with the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department has launched a criminal investigation.

A spokesman for the Sheriff's Department said that they expected to turn the case over to the Ottawa County prosecutor by the end of last week for him to file possible assault charges against at least one and possibly more of the players that had been suspended from school.

"All we are able to confirm at this time is that we are investigating the incident, we have suspended four students, and that the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department is also investigating the matter to see if something criminal happened," Superintendent Kevin O'Neill said. "Anything else at this time is speculation and I think that we need to be dealing with facts when we are dealing with students."

The incident in question occurred on May 18 after the team's practice, according to Coopersville athletic director Steve Bennink. The junior varsity team finished practice and the players had gone to the locker room in the high school while first-year Coach Brian Barrett locked up the equipment on the field. "He told me that he came into the locker room five to 10 minutes later and saw a couple of guys wrestling on the floor," Bennink said last Thursday.
When Barrett asked what was going on, they told him nothing and then the players left the locker room, Bennink said he was told.

Later that night Barrett got a call from a parent telling him that the caller's son had been attacked in the locker room before Barrett came in, Bennink said. "He called me right away and we talked about the incident and I immediately called Ron Veldman, the high school principal."

Veldman immediately called the school's community policing officer, he said, who began the investigation as to what actually happened in the locker room. The investigation was turned over to detectives the following Monday.
Bennick said the he met with the coach the next morning to discuss the situation, and at that point told Barrett that he might be suspended as a result of the investigation. "As the season was almost over and he knew that he couldn't coach for us next year, as he will be student teaching, he decided to resign at that point," Bennink said.

O'Neill confirmed school officials are looking into allegations that similar incidents have occurred on more than one occasion during the baseball season and may have occurred earlier during the school year. "We are investigating to find out what happened and if similar incidents happened at other times of the season and year," he said.

Once the investigation is complete and that could be as soon as the end of this week, O'Neill said he will then decide what further actions to take. "It may be that no further action is required or we may decide that some of the actions of the students involved warrant expulsions," O'Neill said.

He said that once the school's investigation is completed, he will take the recommendations to the school board's discipline officer, which, is this case is expected to be board president Tim Postma. At that time, parents and students can request a closed meeting to discuss the actions that have been recommended.

If expulsions are recommended, action will have to be approved by the full school board at the July 18 board meeting, O'Neill said. He added that the school district's investigation is separate from the on-going criminal investigation by the Sheriff's Department.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Lt. Mark Bennett, of the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department, confirmed that more than one suspect was under investigation and that it appeared that there had been more than one victim in the alleged assault.

As to how many more persons there may have been involved with the assault, Bennett said that he would not elaborate until the investigation is concluded. "We need to make sure that the incident has been thoroughly investigated before we talk about it," Bennett said. "To do anything else might compromise the investigation and that wouldn't be fair to the victims in the case or anyone else."

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