Substitute teacher arrested at Aliso Niguel High School for threatening classroom
Authorities on Wednesday arrested a substitute teacher for allegedly threatening a classroom he was overseeing at Aliso Niguel High School.
"He really went psycho," said senior Dominic Caito.
According to Orange County Sheriff's Department, deputies were dispatched to the school, located on Wolverine Way in Aliso Viejo, at around 12:20 p.m. after students made a campus supervisor aware of a threat made by a substitute math teacher.
The supervisor and other campus administration evacuated the students from the class until authorities could arrive.
One parent spoke with CBS reporters, who said that the substitute became agitated when a student arrived late to class after a trip to the nurse's office. He then began yelling at the student, then turning his attention on the classroom, allegedly threatening to either hurt or kill them.
A video taken by one of the students inside the classroom shows the man shouting at the students.
"I wanna see a note! Go back to the nurse's office and get a f—ing note!" the suspect said.
The suspect, a man who has since been identified as 69-year-old James Setterholm, was arrested at the scene at around 4 p.m. Students said that the deputies had to tackle him to the ground in order to handcuff him.
"He can't be using that kind of language inside a school environment," said Caito. "It's very derogatory towards us."
He is expected to be charged with making criminal threats, though it was still unclear what the exact details of the threats were.
On Friday, authorities disclosed that Setterholm faces additional charges, after they found that he had brought a weapon onto campus in the form of a pocket knife in his bag. He was not believed to have used the weapon during the threats.
Staff and students were told to shelter in place as investigators swept the campus to determine if there were any additional threats. After 40 minutes they determined that school could return to normal. At that time, students were able to be picked up by parents or opt to remain in class until the day's usual end time.
A student said that the immediate reaction was panic from most of his classmates.
"They were saying it wasn't a drill. It wasn't a drill. We were all just panicking around the classroom," he said. "We didn't know what was going on and thinking of the worst-case scenario."
Wednesday was a planning day for the school's math department, so all of the math classrooms were being overseen by substitute teachers.
