Ellis Tech assistant principal, still on paid leave, appears in court on felony gun charge

DANIELSON — A local assistant principal accused of bringing a firearm to school in 2021 made his first appearance in court on Wednesday, but did not enter a plea to the charge.

Rolando Navarro, 43, a Harvard H. Ellis Technical High School assistant principal, appeared before Danielson Superior Court Judge Courtney Chaplin more than two weeks after state police charged the administrator with a felony count of possession of a weapon on school property.

Navarro was accompanied by Attorney Virginia Gillette, of Santos & LaLima, a Hartford-based law firm that specializes in criminal defense.

State’s Attorney Anne Mahoney informed Chaplin her office this week handed over a voluminous cache of discovery in the case to Gillette, including 143 pages of documents and five computer discs.

Mahoney said she was not requesting Navarro’s case be transferred to the court’s Part A docket, where the most serious crimes in the region are heard, but did ask that future court dates be scheduled for Fridays, when those kinds of cases are brought forward.

The Class D felony Navarro is charged with is the least serious felony charge in Connecticut and is publishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

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Navarro, whose left hand was bandaged, did not speak during the proceedings. He is free on a $1,000 bond and is due next in court on Oct. 14.

Navarro was arrested on Aug. 16, more than a year after Ellis Tech officials said they learned a semi-automatic Glock pistol was found in the trunk of Navarro’s vehicle by a student while it was parked in the school’s Danielson auto shop.

According to a state police criminal summary, Navarro said he accidentally left an unloaded weapon and magazine in his vehicle inside a lock-box on June 8, 2021 where it was found by a student asked to perform a tire rotation on the vehicle.

Principal Rafael Calixto said he was aware of the incident, but did not inform the state Department of Children and Families or law enforcement of the discovery, according to a warrant application. Both agencies opened investigations into the incident in February, the same month Navarro and Calixto were both put on paid administrative leave.

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State police out of Troop D in Danielson in March concluded Navarro’s actions did not violate state law, but the Windham County State’s Attorney’s Office in May requested the case be re-opened.

The case was re-assigned to a detective from the state police’s Central District Major Crime Squad at Troop F in Westbrook.

Both Navarro and Calixto were still employed by the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System, or CTECS, as of Monday. CTECS oversees the state’s 17 technical high schools.

Mahoney said her office reviews closed police cases from “time to time” and makes a decision on whether further investigative work is required. She declined to comment on why Navarro’s case was re-assigned to another state police barracks.

John Penney can be reached at jpenney@norwichbulletin.com or at (860) 857-6965.

This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Ellis Tech assistant principal in court on felony weapons charge