Update: Tuolumne school board member vowed to be ‘executioner for God,’ court filing says
A court filing details alleged threats by a Tuolumne County school board member to kill children and other people.
Jason Vassar, 50, claimed to be the messiah and made racist and anti-government statements in documents reported Tuesday by the Union Democrat newspaper.
Vassar serves on the Belleview Elementary School District board. It oversees a single campus for preschool through eighth grade about six miles west of Twain Harte.
Vassar continues to be detained for a mental evaluation, the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office said. The district has begun the process for removing him from the board.
Vassar did not threaten any specific person, Superintendent/Principal Carmel Portillo said in an email to families and staff members.
The details reported Tuesday were in the district’s petition for a restraining order again Vassar, which was granted by a judge. The story included this sequence of events:
Portillo and another administrator met with Vassar on Oct. 30 to discuss his mental health, along with school board matters. After leaving, he sent them emails with a total of 93 pages of comments, some of them profane.
The topics included COVID-19 in schools, the Antichrist and other biblical references, and complaints about communists and socialists.
“I was kind of shocked to read in Revelations that I was going to be executioner for God and kill your children,” Vassar allegedly wrote.
He also is accused of leaving a threatening voicemail with an administrator after being served with the restraining order. It required him to stay at least 1,000 feet away from the Belleview campus, students and employees. The same applied to the office of the county superintendent of schools, which provides various services to districts.
Vassar was appointed to a vacancy on the three-member board in 2015 and won elections in 2016 and 2022.
