Professor shoved at CGCC

Instructor Jim Pytel said he learned Friday that another instructor had been shoved previously by the same man. He has asked the college Board of Education to investigate and is demanding information about the past incident and the policy on notifying others of such incidents.

Pytel teaches full-time in the college’s renewable energy technology program, which is housed in the Fort Dalles Readiness Center on the college campus.

Pytel, who was a captain in the U.S. Army and has an extensive martial arts background, said the man confronted him about a test and shoved him three times. “I asked him to back down. He didn’t back down. I had to take him down, put him in a submission hold. He kept fighting me.”

Pytel had another student call police, and the man, who has a slight build, “became increasingly more agitated that police were coming up there.”

He had loosened his grip a bit, but the man continued to resist, so he reapplied pressure to his neck and arm. “I said, ‘I will break your neck and break your arm unless you listen to me.’”

He was then joined in holding the student down by two other students. “I said, ‘I will let you breathe if you calm down.”

Asked how he knew the man couldn’t breathe, Pytel said, “When his face got purple I kind of assumed I was effective.”

When police arrived, Waterbury said the man had to be shocked with a stun gun to control him. “There was mass confusion when we got there,” Waterbury said.

Waterbury said Pytel had minor injuries to his head and one eye.

One of the times Pytel loosened his hold on the man, the man “poked me in the eye,” he said.

Pytel said he knew the man didn’t have a weapon because he could see both his hands.

He said he’d been watching the man closely since the 11-week course began five weeks ago.

Pytel said while police were hauling the man off, two other students resumed taking their test. About eight students were in the classroom when the scuffle happened, and another nine or so were outside, having finished the test.

Pytel lauded the students who helped him and the police who responded.

He has instituted new security measures and his classroom was in “lockdown.”

Waterbury said assaults on instructors are not unheard of here.

“We have a junior high here, we have a high school here, we have a college here, it’s not something we respond to every day but it occasionally does happen, and it’s also not all that unusual to have citizens pitch in and help.”