Teacher Charged With Assault For Explosion That Injured Students
DENVER (CBS4) - A former teacher has been charged with assault for an explosion that injured students in a chemistry class.
According to Lynn Kimbrough with the district attorney's office, Daniel Powell, 22, "has been served with a summons charging him with four counts of third-degree assault, a Class 1 misdemeanor."
"The teacher was just not happy with the size of the methanol flame that he had and he was trying to make it bigger," U.S. Chemical Safety Board Incident Investigator Dan Tillema said.
He did so by pouring methanol on a small fire, according to what Powell told police after his demonstration caused flames to shoot out at his students.
Tillema is among the investigators looking into the incident, as well as similar explosions around the country.
"Everybody we've talked to has had this happen to them. It's just not really aware that methanol can propagate back into that jug, and certainly not aware that the force and the extent that the fire comes out of that jug," he said.
The CSB says Powell, a first-year teacher, did not have sufficient training to handle or understand the flammable characteristics of methanol. The Denver district attorney has charged him with third-degree assault, saying his negligence caused harm to four students.
Given it's not the first time methanol has caused an explosion in a classroom-like setting, the CSB hopes to see more oversight by school districts, if not the state.
"In this particular case we're not even aware that the school was aware that it was going on," Tillema said. "The school doesn't seem to have an oversight of these types of demonstrations. Other schools do have more robust systems in place and we'd like to see more of that."
CBS4 contacted Denver Public Schools but has yet to receive an official comment on the matter.
The CSB says that had Powell had a safety can, which stops flames from shooting back out, the whole incident could've been prevented.
