New teacher arrested at Palo Verde

Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.

A new Clark County teacher was arrested Monday at Palo Verde High School on manslaughter charges related to an April altercation at a Minnesota bar where he worked as a bouncer, police said this morning.

The first day of the 2005-06 academic year had finished at Palo Verde when Paul Buboltz, a physical education teacher, was taken into custody without incident, said School Police spokesman Darnell Couthen.

Buboltz, 24, is being held at the Clark County Detention Center while the details of his extradition are arranged with Minnesota authorities, Metro Police Jose Montoya said.

Palo Verde officials declined to comment on the arrest.

George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the Clark County School District, said Buboltz had signed his employment contract Aug. 10, making him one of the later employees to be hired for the school year. She declined to discuss the specifics of his application, including whether personal or professional references had been contacted by the district, citing personnel confidentiality.

Buboltz was working at a bar called the Red Carpet when the April 8 incident occurred, according to a copy of the criminal complaint from the Stearns County Sheriff's Office in St. Cloud, Minn.

A patron, who had been ordered to leave the bar because he was intoxicated, returned and was confronted by Buboltz, police said. The patron, 28-year-old Justin Smiley, swung at Buboltz. A second bar employee told police Buboltz then "brought him (Smiley) to the ground" and used his body weight to subdue the other man.

In an interview with police Buboltz confirmed that he laid on top of the patron and put his own arm around the patron's head but the man "kept moving" and "squirming around," according to the complaint.

But several witnesses at the scene said Smiley "never moved after his face hit the ground and the pressure on his neck was never released by the defendant," according to the complaint. Witnesses also told police several people "were telling the bouncer (Buboltz) to get off Smiley and let him breathe."

The investigation determined the patron was restrained by Buboltz for six to seven minutes until police arrived. Smiley was taken by paramedics to a local hospital and was pronounced dead there 18 days later after being taken off life support. An autopsy ruled the cause of death "lack of oxygen to the brain as a result of prolonged compression of the neck."

Criminal background checks are conducted on all teacher applicants. But the report is typically limited to arrests and the disposition of any criminal charges and does not show whether someone was under investigation.

However the Nevada Education Department, in response to a slew of teachers arrested on sex-related offenses in the last five years, changed its licensing application to make it more difficult for individuals to lawfully conceal their histories.

The state used to limit its questions to asking people whether they had been convicted of a crime, said State Schools Superintendent Keith Rheault.

The state now asks whether individuals have either been convicted or have charges pending, Rheault said.

But that wouldn't necessarily have helped in situations where an applicant was involved in an altercation but not yet charged, as the case appears to be with Buboltz, Rheault said.

"We may want to look at adding 'Are you currently under investigation,' that might be better wording," Rheault said. "Maybe we can make the net a little tighter."