Couple Ordered to Stay Away From Educators

A San Bernardino County judge Monday ordered a husband and wife to stay at least 100 yards away from school officials’ offices, cars and homes, days after the couple were accused of barging into a high desert office, handcuffing a superintendent and placing him under citizen’s arrest.

However, the superintendent said Monday that he still doesn’t feel particularly safe, because both targets of the restraining order have been released from jail pending trial.

“We have some real concerns,” said Jim Wheeler, interim superintendent of the Lucerne Valley Unified School District, a four-school district in the high desert of San Bernardino County that serves slightly more than 1,000 students. “These are interesting times.”

Wheeler said he will meet with sheriff’s deputies as soon as today to discuss adding security at the district’s small headquarters in Lucerne Valley.

Comparing the dispute to that between Capt. Ahab and Moby Dick, the white whale who maimed him, Wheeler said: “It’s like an obsession of some sort.”

“Now we don’t know where he’s going,” Wheeler said. “Who’s he mad at now? Is he madder because of this? Or has he let off enough steam and does he feel like he’s raised the level of consciousness enough to feel better?”

Investigators say the couple, 45-year-old Carl Williams and 48-year-old Kathy Williams, charged into Wheeler’s office last week, then followed him out of the building, handcuffed him and forced him into their car.

They were apparently making a citizen’s arrest in protest of school policies and were en route to the district attorney’s office when they were stopped by two sheriff’s cruisers.

Both were charged with felony burglary, felony kidnapping and misdemeanor battery. Both have been released on $100,000 bail.

The alleged abduction came after a decade-long dispute between the couple, who have five children enrolled in local schools, and school officials.

Court documents filed to support the school district’s request for restraining orders contained copies of dozens of pages of angry letters from the Williamses.

The family has apparently objected to virtually every school policy they learned of, such as the presence of police officers on campus, which they say “indicates disrespect and contempt for the families who make up this community.” Computerized education data, the couple wrote, amounted to a “big brother” invasion of their privacy.

And forcing the couple’s children to complete health courses before they could enroll in driver’s education, the couple wrote, amounted to “a treacherous scheme,” because the family is opposed to “outside instruction on spirituality and morality.”