No Indictment for Teacher Over Remark on Mass Shooting

A grand jury on Wednesday declined to indict a Brooklyn teacher who was arrested earlier this month after making a remark about carrying out a mass shooting at her school, her lawyer said.

The teacher, Sabrina Milo, 34, told colleagues at Fort Hamilton High School she was thinking about showing up at the school with a gun and mounting a “Columbine-style” attack. Officers were called to the school, and Ms. Milo, who had taught there since 2001, was pulled from a classroom and later charged with making terrorist threats, a felony that could have resulted in up to five years in prison.

But after listening to testimony, including Ms. Milo’s, a Brooklyn grand jury refused to indict her, said her lawyer, Andrew Stoll.

Mr. Stoll said that she did, in fact, make the remark, but that it was a joke that was blown out of proportion.

“She made a comment in the teachers’ lounge that ‘If I had a trench coat and a shot gun, it’d be Columbine all over again,’?” he said. “But no one took it seriously. Nobody believed it was a realistic threat or believed there was imminent danger.”

After her arrest, Ms. Milo, an art teacher, was reassigned to a Department of Education building on Chambers Street. Barbara Morgan, a department spokeswoman, said last night that she “remains reassigned pending disciplinary charges.”

Mr. Stoll said that Ms. Milo had received dozens of letters from students and teachers expressing their support for her, and that she was happy the grand jury saw “what would’ve been obvious to anyone, which is that even accepting the allegations as true, there was no crime here.”

But, he said, “it’s not over for her until she’s back in the classroom teaching her students.”

A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office declined to comment.