Eastlawn principal’s case likely to go to jury on Thursday

Jurors were scheduled to hear closing arguments this morning in the trial of a former Alamance-Burlington elementary school principal who is charged with assaulting a nine-year-old male student in a boys’ bathroom at the school in November 2023.

[UPDATE: Closing statements concluded before lunch Thursday.  Jurors were expected to be charged with instructions from the judge and begin their deliberations Thursday afternoon.]

Former Eastlawn Elementary School principal Daniel McInnis, 46, white, male, of Burlington is charged with: a statutory sex offense with child by an adult; a sex act with a student; indecent liberties with a child; and sexual battery.  He has pleaded not guilty.

The alleged victim, now 12, claims he had been in his fourth-grade math class when McInnis walked in, told the teacher he needed to speak with him, and led him down a hallway to a boys’ bathroom and sexually assaulted him in a stall.

Initially, the date of the alleged offense was listed as November 21, 2023, but the potential time frame for the alleged offense was later enlarged to sometime between October and December 2023, the defense pointed out for jurors after McInnis testified Tuesday afternoon.  He is being represented by John Cox of Graham and Lisa Dubs of Hickory.

Following testimony by a rebuttal witness called by assistant D.A. Elizabeth Olivier late Tuesday afternoon, Dubs introduced a motion to dismiss, arguing that there was a “fatal variance” between the November 21, 2023 date of the alleged offense that had been listed on the first bill of indictment and a “date range” listed on a subsequent indictment.

Alamance County senior resident superior court judge C. Douglas Green, who is presiding over McInnis trial, heard arguments on the defense’s motion to dismiss the charges after the prosecution and defense rested and he excused jurors shortly before 5:00 p.m. Tuesday.  Courts were closed Wednesday in observance of Veteran’s Day.

“Your honor, there is no evidence whatsoever that has been presented that would move the date of this offense back beyond when the mother says something happened about two weeks after what happened with [her younger son]. There is no evidence whatsoever putting it back into that October range, a date that was added just two-and-a-half months ago.”

– Defense attorney Lisa Dubs, in arguing that all charges should be dismissed

“Your honor, there is no evidence whatsoever that has been presented that would move the date of this offense back beyond when the mother says something happened about two weeks after what happened with [her younger son],” Dubs said in arguing the motion to dismiss. “There is no evidence whatsoever putting it back into that October range, a date that was added just two-and-a-half months ago.”

Originally, the alleged victim’s mother reported that her six-year-old son, then a first-grader at Eastlawn, had told her that the principal touched him on the butt.  The State Bureau of Investigation investigated and found it to be unsubstantiated, based on court filings and testimony the jury heard last week. No charges were filed in connection to the younger son’s claim.

Two weeks later, the mother claimed that her nine-year-old son had told her that his principal took him out of his math class, led him down a hallway, and sexually assaulted him in the boys’ bathroom.

Olivier countered, “There is sufficient evidence as far as the indictment.”  She pointed out that detective who led the investigation for the Burlington police department, Brittany Benfield, testified last week that – after talking to Dr. Dana Hagele, who performed a medical exam on the child for CrossRoads Sexual Assault & Response Center in Burlington – it could have happened earlier.

Hagele testified last week that children aren’t always clear about timelines and “may not recall the exact date” of a sexual assault, Olivier reminded Green Tuesday afternoon.

“There was testimony all the way to November 6 or 7 [of 2023], where he did tell his mom, ‘No, it didn’t happen,’” Olivier said in arguing against the motion to dismiss the charges. “There’s been evidence that children typically will say no at first, for fear of getting in trouble.  There is ample evidence to support that. The court has been very clear about child sex offenses and date ranges. There has been evidence to support that date range, and I ask you to deny their motion altogether.”

The defense had sought unsuccessfully to call its own expert in child forensic interviewing, Dr. Amy James of New Bern, to testify that the forensic interview conducted with the alleged victim in McInnis’ case had not followed best practices.  James testified at length, outside the jury’s presence Friday afternoon, that because of how the questions were posed to the alleged victim, “the forensic interview is problematic.”

Green on Monday morning denied the defense’s motion to qualify James as an expert witness and to allow her to testify in the jury’s presence, agreeing with the prosecutor that allowing her testimony could potentially confuse the jury and usurp its role in determining the credibility of the child.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the judge also denied a motion by the defense to dismiss altogether the charges against McInnis.

Jury hears from alleged victim’s mother

On Thursday afternoon, jurors heard testimony from the mother of the alleged victim, Tania Perez, about the family’s meeting with an immigration attorney in Greensboro in order to obtain a special visa that would allow them to stay in the country.

Following a hearing on pretrial motions late last month, Green ruled against a motion by Olivier to prevent that information from being introduced into evidence at the trial, based on her assertion that the immigration status of the alleged victim or his family members, or their inquiries into a U-Visa application, was irrelevant.

The prosecutor also sought, unsuccessfully, to prevent the defense from calling an expert witness on the U-Visa application process.

Attorney Helen Parsonage of Winston-Salem, an expert in immigration law, testified Monday that a U-Visa is one of the few ways an undocumented person who entered the country illegally can apply for a visa without having to leave the country and apply before being eligible to reenter the U.S.

To be eligible for a U-Visa, an applicant (and/or his family members) must be a victim of a serious crime, show some physical or mental harm, and cooperate with law enforcement throughout the criminal case, Parsonage testified.  “If you’re going to say, ‘I have [post-traumatic stress disorder] nightmares, not sleeping well, I have agoraphobia’ – any of those things would need a medical practitioner to sign off on that,” she testified, adding later that a successful application for a U-Visa “does not turn on a conviction.”

“If I have to be deported, let it be. . . I don’t care about that [U-Visa that would allow her to stay in country] anymore.”

– Tania Perez, mother of the alleged victim

During her testimony Thursday, Perez herself twice raised the possibility of being deported, telling jurors through an interpreter, “If I have to be deported, let it be.”  She also said she wouldn’t have consulted with the law firm had she known it would bolster McInnis’ defense, testifying Thursday afternoon, “I don’t care about that [U-Visa] anymore.”

She testified that her nine-year-old son “changed dramatically” after the alleged assault, saying he was afraid to socialize at school and afraid to go into public bathrooms.  Perez testified last Thursday that she only learned about the alleged sexual assault after her nine-year-old son kept waking up with nightmares, and she pressed him to tell her what was wrong.

The child’s fifth-grade teacher disputed the mother’s description of her son as being afraid to socialize during his testimony on Friday morning, saying that the student had a lot of friends at school and became a “student leader” in his classroom before confessing to him twice during the 2024-25 school year that he’d made up the alleged sexual assault.

Xavier Jones

The student’s former fifth-grade teacher, Xavier Jones, who worked at Eastlawn in 2024-25 and left ABSS at the end of that school year,  testified Friday morning about how his former student had recanted his claims against McInnis twice: around the middle of the school year and again on the last day of school.

Jones testified on Friday morning that he’d never met or talked with McInnis but “kind of heard” about the allegation when he overhead kids at school talking about it.  “I was basically going about my day,” he told the jury Friday.  “I ended up looking up and finding out about all of this myself.”  He said he found out more information by doing a Google search on his phone.

Jones recalled that his student first recanted his allegation against McInnis during a classroom discussion, a practice that began at Eastlawn that year after one of the students lost a family member.  “It was a school-wide action we did” to try to get kids to open up and talk about their feelings, Jones recalled.

The first time, Jones testified, the child said during the classroom discussion, “‘He felt bad for what happened to principal McInnis.’”  The second time was on the last day of school, in June 2025.  “He was saying he felt bad, and no it wasn’t true. . . it was pretty much a setup, like a forceful thing they had to do,” Jones told the jury.  “He said Mr. McInnis looked after him.”

Jones testified that he reported his student’s second recantation to his principal, Syeda Smith-Williams, who instructed him to speak to the school system’s Human Resources department, and he walked across the parking lot at Eastlawn to the ABSS Central Office and reported it to HR.

“I did not specifically tell [Smith-Williams] which student,” Jones testified.  “I went down there and said he didn’t do it.”

During cross-examination by Olivier, he admitted he felt like was being taken advantage of as a beginning teacher at Eastlawn when he found out the alleged victim had been placed in his fifth-grade class and that he had trouble finding substitutes to cover for him when he needed to be off because the child was in his class.  He admitted to being “a bit angry” after learning that, as a new teacher at the school, he’d been saddled with a potential problem child, but it never changed how he did his job.

But Jones disputed Olivier’s assertion that other teachers at Eastlawn had shunned the student and given him “false suspensions” so they wouldn’t have to deal with the child.  He agreed during cross-examination that a number of teachers at Eastlawn had continued to support McInnis following his arrest on December 29, 2023.

Indeed, approximately two dozen supporters, including many of McInnis’ former colleagues at Eastlawn, have been present in court throughout every stage of the trial, and several testified for his defense.

Last Thursday afternoon, Cox led the questioning of McInnis’ former colleagues.  But first, the judge instructed the Eastlawn witnesses to remove ribbons in the same hue of blue used in the school’s colors from their clothing before taking the witness stand.

On Friday morning, Jones said he’d been subpoenaed by both sides to testify but remained adamant that he didn’t want to be involved in the trial – but not because of any bias against the alleged victim.

“I spoke to detectives and stated everything I needed to,” Jones testified, saying he feared his involvement in the McInnis case could negatively affect his own legal battle over custody of his son.

During cross-examination by Olivier, Jones recalled, “His words were, I believe, ‘My parents made me do it, and I didn’t want to do it.”

The prosecutor suggested that Jones had changed his description of the child’s recantation three times while testifying Friday and repeatedly questioned Jones about why he hadn’t pressed the child for more details, or contacted law enforcement.

“Did he specifically say the principal’s name?” Olivier asked Jones under cross-examination.  “Did he say [he] ‘felt bad about the situation with Mr. McInnis’? Which statement is it that [the alleged victim made] to you? Did you ask, ‘what situation are you talking about’?”

“He said he felt bad about the situation,” Jones said, indicating that he hadn’t wanted to interrupt while the child was opening up to him.  “I’m not going to remember everything as vividly as it was two years ago,” he said.

Olivier asked, “You didn’t think it was important – with such serious allegations – that you have a full-on conversation…You did not think it was important to clarify [with the child] so you could accurately report [it]?”

Now a teacher for Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, Jones said it isn’t his job to investigate potential crimes, telling the prosecutor, “That’s not in your contract as a teacher.”

ADA and defense witness spar

“You had made your mind up about these allegations, hadn’t you? . . .You expressed to the detective multiple times that you believe [McInnis] is innocent.”

– Assistant district attorney Elizabeth Olivier

“I didn’t make up anything, ma’am. I don’t know this man from a can of paint.  I didn’t want to [testify]. I have students; I have a child; I have things I have to take care of.”

– Xavier Jones, former Eastlawn teacher

“You had made your mind up about these allegations, hadn’t you?” Olivier pressed Jones.  “You expressed to the detective multiple times that you believe [McInnis] is innocent.”

“I didn’t make up anything, ma’am,” Jones countered.  “I don’t know this man from a can of paint.  I didn’t want to do this. I have students; I have a child; I have things I have to take care of.”  He insisted that he’d followed ABSS protocol, which required him to follow the chain of command by reporting it to his principal, who at the time was Syeda Smith-Williams.

“I went to HR, and I didn’t want anything else to do it with it.  I didn’t want to be involved with anything having to do with anyone else’s freedom or having a child stay here,” he said, referring to the claim that alleged victim and his family were at risk for deportation.

During redirect, Dubs asked Jones, “Have you made up this recantation because you wanted to be involved in this?”

No, Jones responded, adding, “Who in their right mind would?”

Teacher: Principal couldn’t have been two places at once at time of alleged assault

Late last week and earlier this week, jurors heard testimony from multiple current and former Eastlawn teachers and substitutes that they never saw McInnis go into the student’s class the day on which the alleged assault was originally said to have occurred, November 21, 2023.

The alleged victim’s former fourth-grade math teacher, Sheila Clinkscales, testified that McInnis had never come into her classroom and pulled the child out on the day of the alleged assault, though she also said she’d been out from work around the original date of the alleged offense.

Two substitutes who helped cover Clinkscales’ math class on the date of the alleged assault, Eva Turner and Archie Fuller, testified Monday afternoon that they had no recollection of the principal coming in and removing the alleged victim from the classroom.

Clinkscales acknowledged that some of the teachers were wary of interacting with the student, as word about the alleged assault spread throughout the school, but said they continued to teach him and treat him as they would any other student.

Prior to hearing from the defendant himself, jurors heard testimony by two former Exceptional Children’s teachers, Shavon Via (now an EC teacher at E.M. Holt Elementary School) and Amanda Cvijanovic (now a teacher in Wake County), who gave an account of McInnis’ whereabouts throughout the day of the alleged assault.

The two EC teachers – who shared a classroom directly beside the boys’ bathroom where the assault allegedly occurred – testified that there was no way the principal could’ve assaulted the student on November 21, 2023 because he had been assisting them with a combative student throughout most of that day.

“I can hear them going to the bathroom. . . I can hear them washing their hands, pulling the paper towels down, obviously lots of little giggling and chattering.”

– Former Eastlawn teacher Sharon Via

Via testified Monday afternoon that her classroom door was never shut, and her desk and chair was on the same wall as the bathroom stalls.  “I can hear them going to the bathroom,” she testified, saying that the doors to the boys’ and girls’ bathroom, beside her classroom, were never shut.  Both Via and Cvijanovic confirmed that anybody walking down the hallway could see inside either bathroom.

“I can hear the students going to the bathroom,” Via later reiterated.  “I can hear them washing their hands, pulling the paper towels down, obviously lots of little giggling and chattering.”

For her part, Via said that she had never been interviewed during the investigation and requested to speak with the lead detective, Benfield, in mid-February 2024.  She testified that one of her students was very dysregulated, meaning that the child’s nervous system had become overwhelmed, leading to combative behavior.

“That was a really tough day for one of my students,” Via recalled.  He was very dysregulated, having a very difficult time.  I was able to transport him back to his classroom.  However, it did not last long, and he ended up back in my classroom.  He was in my classroom for the duration of the day from, I would say about 7:45 [a.m.]…He was very upset, tearing the room up, throwing chairs, trying to hurt other staff members, as well.”  Cvijanovic was texting back and forth with McInnis to help us.

“During that, Mr. McInnis was helping me with that because we have to do what’s called [Child Prevention Intervention, or CPI] holds because we could not dysregulate him,” Via testified.  “I called him to help me dysregulate my student, also to be a second person in the room, because when they get so dysregulated, we do not like to be in the rooms by ourselves, so we call for administrative backup.  I have records of it from my students’ files.”

CPI holds are used a last resort to deescalate “when a student is not calm, unable to hold their composure or to talk to me, walk down the hallway – if they’re just so upset that they’re throwing things, pulling things off the walls, throwing chairs at myself or other students,” Via testified. She said she and Cvijanovic usually had about four students each in their classroom on any given school day.

Via described the hallway on which her classroom at Eastlawn had been located, beside the bathroom where the alleged assault occurred, as “always busy” with students “always coming and going for specials,” such as music, art, and P.E., as well as teachers going back and forth to a copier room across the hall.  “The only time the hallway could ever be a little bit quiet might be later in the afternoon, when people are getting ready to leave for dismissal, but during the day, everybody’s either going for recess, lunch, or specials.  So it’s actively moving.”

“After lunch, me and Mr. McInnis walked him to the bus…I think it was between 11:30 and 12:00.  He had to help me get him on the bus because he refused to leave,” Via said, adding that she had documented the entire incident because it’s required by the state of North Carolina.

“When it came out, in the public record, they said it was November 21, and they said it happened in the room beside my room in the morning,” Via testified.  “It was impossible for him to be in two places at once.  It’s impossible to be supporting a staff member with a student who’s so dysregulated, and to be with another student when he was with me the entire morning.”

On cross-examination, prosecutor countered that Benfield had told her during their meeting in February 2024 that it could’ve been a different day.
“She [the detective] asked me about that specific day,” Via responded, “and I told her about that specific day.”

McInnis takes the stand

Late Tuesday morning, McInnis outline for jurors his daily work routine before reconstructing what he’d done throughout the day of November 21, 2023, as well as several other dates prior to the date of the alleged assault. He said he had put in a request to take a personal leave day on that date because he and his family had planned to drive south on November 21 to spend Thanksgiving with his wife’s mother, but they decided to wait until November 22 because they would’ve gotten caught in heavy storms up along the I-85 corridor.

McInnis recounted, at times tearfully, how he’d been hired as the assistant principal at Eastlawn in July 2011 and was promoted to principal in November 2012.  He also pointed out that his own children – now 14, 11, and eight years old – had all been enrolled at Eastlawn while he was principal.

The morning of November 21, McInnis testified, “There was a student throwing chairs [in the EC classroom], just refusing to follow instruction, trying to run out of the classroom, hitting the teachers.”  He had documented calling that student’s mother to let her know that the EC bus was on the way to pick up the student from school and take him home.

McInnis said he’d also had to deal with a different discipline issue in a music room, where three students were fighting, and “make parent contact for all three students, discussing the consequences those students, had as well.”

His school-issued devices, as well as data stored on the school’s online information management systems and platforms, provided a digital footprint of his movements throughout the day on November 21, as well any other work day, McInnis told the jury.

That digital footprint, to which McInnis testified Tuesday, included: text messages to school staff; emails from his school email account; a Google calendar connected to his school email account; a Google spreadsheet he used for teacher observations; an online substitute teacher management program; and an online system in which student discipline referrals were time-stamped and automatically forwarded to both his school email account and an app on his school-issued phone.

McInnis said that a student information management program allowed him to track all students’ enrollment and attendance histories, in their cumulative files, but neither he nor any school employee has knowledge of a student’s immigration status, information which is protected from disclosure under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

Other than the child’s claim, no evidence of the alleged assault has been introduced at McInnis’ trial.

The former principal testified that his only interaction with either brother had been immediately after Ms. Perez left a message for him on October 23, 2023, saying that three students were bullying her nine-year-old son.  “I hung around at recess [one day] to make sure everything was okay,” McInnis said Tuesday.

After the first allegation about the younger student surfaced, McInnis told jurors he’d completely removed himself from any possible interaction with either of the two brothers.  “I just stayed away from those students; I didn’t want to be accused of anything,” he testified.

He also changed other dimensions of his workday routine.  McInnis’ previous practice had been to walk a newly-enrolled student to class, but he stopped doing that after learning about the six-year-old’s claim.  He also rescheduled several planned classroom observations after seeing that the older student was in the classroom.  In fact, for one, he said he saw the child and didn’t even enter the classroom, instead texting the teacher that he would reschedule for another time, McInnis testified.

McInnis had been at school working on Sunday, December 10, 2023 – where his two older children were upstairs in the gym playing basketball – when he received a phone call from then-deputy superintendent Lowell Rogers, telling him not to return to the Eastlawn Elementary School campus, the defendant testified Tuesday afternoon.

He was notified of his suspension in a letter he was given when he met with Rogers and ABSS human resources director Yolanda Anderson on December 14, 2023, when he was told that the Burlington police department was investigating “someone for crimes against a student.”

It wasn’t until after his arrest at his home on December 29, 2023 – where he’d been taking down Christmas decorations while his two sons played basketball in the backyard – that he was the target of the investigation and the seriousness of the allegation, McInnis testified.

On redirect, Dubs asked, “Mr. McInnis, did you ever take your pants off around [the alleged victim] or any other child?  Did you ever take [the alleged victim’s] or any other child’s clothes off?  And – I hate to put it this way –did you take your penis and put it into the [student’s] anus?”

“No, I did not,” said McInnis, who has pleaded not guilty to each of the charges. He remains employed with ABSS but continues to be suspended without pay.

The trial resumes at 9:30 this morning in the second-floor courtroom inside Alamance County’s Historic Court House.

McInnis has no prior criminal record.  If convicted, he faces a maximum prison sentence of up to of up to 434 months, plus 60 days (for a total of about 36 years), Green said at the outset of the trial two weeks ago.

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