B2 EZ RE KK THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022
BY TOM JACKMANA Howard County man who
discharged a fire extinguisher
into a group of police officers try-
ing to hold back the surging mob
at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,
while also exhorting rioters to
press forward, was sentenced t his
week to 33 months in prison by a
federal judge in the District.
Prosecutors asked U.S. District
Judge Randolph D. Moss to im-
pose a term of 51 months on Mat-
thew Ryan Miller, 23, of Cooks-
ville. That would have been equal
to the second-highest term yet
handed out for the Jan. 6 attack.
Federal advisory sentencing
guidelines called for a range of 41
to 51 months, and Assistant U.S.
Attorney Jacqueline N. Schesnol
urged Moss to give Miller the high
end of the range, saying, “Let’s
ensure that Mr. Miller and others
like him are deterred from com-mitting attacks on democracy,”
Schesnol showed video and
photos that depicted Miller, wear-
ing a red Washington Capitals jer-
sey, hurling a beer can and batter-
ies at police, then leading chants
of “Heave ho!” as the crowd surged
toward the Capitol’s lower West
Terrace entrance. Then Miller
could be seen aiming a fire extin-
guisher at Capitol and D.C. police
and spraying it at them, creating a
cloud in the terrace tunnel andforcing some officers to retreat.
The mob could be heard cheering.
After Miller dropped the fire
extinguisher, video showed that
another man, Robert S. Palmer,
picked it up and emptied it at the
police, then hurled it at them. He
received a sentence of 63 months,
the longest term handed down so
far for the Jan. 6 riot. Miller plead-
ed guilty in February to obstruc-
tion of an official proceeding,
namely the certification of theelectoral college vote.
Miller was 22 at the time of the
attack. His lawyer, A. Eduardo
Balarezo, said Miller’s age and his
intoxication — he drank 10 beers
and some hard liquor and smoked
some marijuana — clouded his
judgment. Miller told the judge on
Monday, “I’m ashamed to have
been so swayed by my shortcom-
ings, addictions and naivete. Sad-
ly, I partook in some idiotic ac-
tions that have changed my lifeforever.”
Judge Moss said he was moved
by Miller’s statement, as well as
his age — “he was barely 22, his
judgment was still developing” —
the fact that he was “somewhat
intoxicated” and that he behaved
well while on pretrial release.
The judge went below the sen-
tencing guidelines to 33 months
and ordered Miller to serve two
years on supervised release after
his prison term ends.THE DISTRICT
Maryland man gets 33 months for attack on police a t the Capitol insurrection
dicted in 2018 and 2019 on charg-
es of kidnapping and murdering
the teenagers. Vigil Mejia and at
least some of the other seven
have pleaded guilty and are coop-
erating with prosecutors; their
plea agreements are under seal.
Defense attorneys have argued
Vigil Mejia was a mastermind
behind the killings and was now
trying to pin the blame on others
to reduce his own time behind
bars.
Vigil Mejia pleaded guilty to
murder in aid of racketeering,
faces life in prison and said he
cut a deal with federal prosecu-
tors to testify in court because he
hopes to get a sentence reduc-
tion. Prosecutors plan to call
other cooperating witnesses who
pleaded guilty to the killings, but
Vigil Mejia’s account is the most
extensive, Assistant U.S. Attorney
Rebecca Bellows said.
The trial is expected to last
TRIAL FROM B1 several more weeks. Those
charged face life in prison if
convicted.
Vigil Mejia said he and other
MS-13 members took turns stab-
bing and striking Escobar Men-
dez after luring him up a hillside
to a wooded area in Holmes Run
Valley Stream Park. Gang mem-
bers placed the teenager in a
headlock from behind, threw
him to the ground and struck
him more than 250 times with
knives, machetes, an ax and the
shovel they had used to prepare a
grave, Vigil Mejia said. Some
attendees in the courtroom
choked up as he recounted the
violence.
Once Escobar Mendez had
been killed and buried — and
cellphone video sent as proof to
MS-13 leaders — Vigil Mejia said
that he and the other gang mem-
bers who participated were pro-
moted.
Prosecutors allege that Elmer
Zelaya Martinez, whom they say
led the Park View Locos Salvatru-
cha cell of MS-13 operating in
Virginia and is among those on
trial, sent Vigil Mejia a message
boasting of “killing chavalas with
elegance,” using a Spanish term
for a rival gang member.
Bellows, the lead prosecutor,
asked, “Did you understand what
he meant when he said, ‘With
elegance, dawg, killing chavalas
with elegance’?”
“No traces left of them,” Vigil
Mejia said.
The Park View Locos quickly
discovered that Escobar Mendez
was not a rival gang member but
withheld that information from
MS-13 leaders for fear of being
punished, Vigil Mejia said.
Vigil Mejia, who said he joined
the gang in his native El Salvador
at age 13, later testified that,
weeks after Escobar Mendez’s
slaying, he reported to MS-13
bosses that Arita Triminio, 14,
was a police informant. Gang
leaders ordered the teenagerkilled, he said. Vigil Mejia said he
did not take part in that attack,
but described videos he had seen
of the slaying.
“He was in agony, saying, ‘Why
are you killing me? Why are you
doing this to me?’ ” Vigil Mejia
said of one of the videos. He said
he received that footage the day
after Arita Triminio’s killing in
September 2016, from Elmer Ze-
laya Martinez.
Vigil Mejia said law enforce-
ment officials later showed him a
second video in which Arita
Triminio was battered beyond
recognition. Prosecutors said Ar-
ita Triminio was not a police
informant and argue both kill-
ings were senseless, even under
MS-13’s violent rules.
Bellows asked Vigil Mejia
about dozens of Facebook,
WhatsApp, text and audio mes-
sages and conversations span-
ning several months around the
time of the killings, and he was
able to recall nearly everythingfrom the witness stand. But un-
der questioning from defense
attorney Manuel Leiva, who rep-
resents Elmer Zelaya Martinez,
his memory seemed to falter.
For example, Vigil Mejia said
he could not recall a 2016 ex-
change shown to him in court in
which Vigil Mejia stated a desire
to kill the mother of his daughter.
Nor could he remember a Face-
book message he sent days before
Escobar Mendez’s death, express-
ing an “urge to kill.”
“Is that because you always
had the urge to kill, you don't
remember?” Leiva asked.
Defense attorneys have said
the teenagers were not kid-
napped, arguing they sought out
the gang. Vigil Mejia said in
response to other questions from
Leiva that Arita Triminio was
“eager” and “excited” to transfer
to the Park View MS-13 crew from
another clique called Silvas Lo-
cos Salvatrucha. The 14-year-
old’s mother, Karla Triminio, ear-lier in the trial testified that he
was a loving son who liked soc-
cer, doted on his baby sister and
— despite her warnings — went
out sometimes with seedy char-
acters.
Triminio told the jury she
arranged two of her son’s three
placements in juvenile deten-
tion, adding she sensed he was in
danger “because some people
were looking for him.” As she
testified, Triminio pointed out
two men she said had been
stalking her son: Herrera Contre-
ras and Velasco Barrera.
Triminio said she confronted
Herrera Contreras in 2016, say-
ing her son was detained because
of him, and that he threatened
her.
“I told him ... I didn’t want to
see them near my son,” said
Triminio, who has attended every
day of the trial. She said Herrera
Contreras responded: “Ma’am, be
careful with what you’re doing.
We love the kid a lot.”Gang leader was mastermind of 2 k illings in N.Va., defense attorneys argue
including boarders.
Whittle, an education entre-
preneur who critics say delivers
more rhetoric than results, had
pitched the for-profit venture in
2018 as “the first global school.”
Targeting a high-end market, it
would operate in multiple cities
on multiple continents with a
common faculty. The interdisci-
plinary curriculum would em-
phasize experiential learning, for-
eign-language skills and “a collec-
tive intelligence.” It would charge
tuition of more than $40,000 a
year.
For now, Whittle has a humbler
goal: to stay open in Washington,
his only active campus in the
United States. Tuition discounts
are plentiful. He said he is opti-
mistic the school will operate in
the fall, but he declined to make a
guarantee.
“Do you realize how many
times I’ve been asked that ques-
tion?” he said in a telephone in-
terview this month. “Not just of
this fall, but the prior fall and the
prior fall. We’ve literally been
asked that question for every fall.
What everyone wants to hear —
they want to hear ‘100 percent.’
And that is dishonest.”
As evidence of viability, he cit-
ed $30 million in loans and in-
vestments that have kept the
school running in Washington
while Whittle seeks to raise a
major new round of investments
to put it on stable footing. The
“bridge financing,” as he calls it,
shows the venture is withstand-
ing scrutiny. “People don’t do that
casually,” he said. “That’s not
something that people just wire.”
Still, some parents have given
up.
“We didn’t want our kid to be
left with no school at all,” said one
who pulled his child out this year
because of the school’s financial
troubles. He spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity, citing a desire
to protect the privacy of his child.
But he said he was not unhappy
with the education. “Up until the
moment we left, I never had a
problem with the teachers. I nev-
er had any problem with the mod-
el or the way my kid was learning.
We were planning to stay.”
Graduating seniors, well aware
of the upheaval, praise the
school’s Chinese-language in-
struction and hands-on ap-
proach. “I’ve never felt like my
academic experience has suf-
fered,” said Calla O’Neil, 18, who is
headed in the fall to Georgetown
University.
“We’ve had the opportunity to
start a lot of things,” including a
SCHOOL FROM B1
debate team and student govern-
ment, said Charlotte Weir, 18, an-
other senior. “There’s a lot of
value in learning those lessons.
For me, it definitely helped me get
to college.” She plans to attend the
University of St. Andrews in Scot-
land.
O’Neil, Weir and classmate Ra-
chael Muresan, a boarder from
Tennessee, gave a brief tour of the
school one recent morning, show-
ing off the renovated interior of
the aluminum-and-glass struc-
ture once known as the Intelsat
building. Sunlight streamed
through the roof. Classrooms rose
in a multistory stack around an
atrium.
On a lower level, young chil-
dren in helmets rode tricycles and
scooters around an octagonal
courtyard. Above them, older stu-
dents worked in an art studio and
other classrooms. A striking gym-
nasium occupied a higher level,
with a blue “W” for Whittle cen-
tered on the hardwood floor of a
basketball court.
“I was on the team,” O’Neil said.
For every basketball game, she
said, the stands “were completely
filled.”
Her father, Michael O’Neil, is
involved in efforts to stabilize the
school’s finances. He said he un-
derstands why parents are asking
hard questions. “These are very
personal, very serious things,” he
said. “Nothing’s more importantor more emotional than trying to
figure out what is right for your
family and your children.”
When Whittle School opened,
it sought to make a splash in a
regional market with numerous
tuition-charging competitors,
from Catholic schools to Sidwell
Friends School to Edmund Burke
School, just across Connecticut
Avenue in the Van Ness neighbor-
hood. Some families were lured to
Whittle’s progressive vision of
education. They were unfazed by
its for-profit structure, as a busi-
ness incorporated in the Cayman
Islands.
Most private schools in the
United States operate as nonprof-
it or religious institutions. But
Whittle said his arrangement was
simply a way to raise enough
money to accomplish the school’s
vast goals. He talked of opening
36 campuses in 15 countries with-
in a decade. The debut campus in
China, known there as Huitong
School, launched in 2019 in the
city of Shenzhen.
Midway through the first
school year, the deadly coronavi-
rus emerged. Campuses shut-
tered everywhere, including
Whittle’s.
“He opened his doors and got
hit by a tsunami,” said Thomas
Toch, a research professor at
Georgetown’s McCourt School of
Public Policy and an expert on the
region’s private school market.“The pandemic shut the school
down six months after its open-
ing.” Rising tensions between the
United States and China also hurt
the enterprise, Toch said. “Those
things made it really difficult to
be successful.”
Whittle said the Shenzhen
campus has drawn about 1,000
students, and another will open
soon in the Chinese city of
S uzhou. But it is unclear how or
whether the apparent momen-
tum in China can boost the D.C.
campus. Whittle said the school is
navigating “a new regulatory en-
vironment in China” but declined
to elaborate.
The pandemic dealt a formi-
dable blow to his launch plans, he
said, derailing the development
of a Brooklyn campus, delaying
other expansions and leading in-
vestors to abruptly withhold
$60 million that had been com-
mitted to the enterprise. He said
an almost-done deal for another
$40 million also dissolved in early- The net result: $100 million
had suddenly vanished from the
school’s grasp. That was more
than a third of the total invest-
ment ($270 million) Whittle had
been counting on at the time.
Marketing plans were hobbled
as the school, like others, was
forced to operate remotely for
months. “I’ve been through my
ups and downs in the past 50
years, but nothing compared with
this,” he said.
Whittle, 74, is controversial in
the education world. In 1989 he
launched Channel One, a news
program for schools that critics
said exposed students to too
much commercial advertising. In
the early 1990 s he co-founded
Edison Schools, a for-profit ven-
ture that sought to improve pub-
lic schools through better man-
agement. Edison’s record, finan-
cially and educationally, was
mixed. But it provided significant
early support to the charter
school movement, including
Friendship Public Charter
Schools in the District.
In 2012, Whittle led the open-
ing of Avenues: The World School
in New York, another private
school venture. He left three years
later, for reasons he declined to
explain, but Avenues continues to
operate in Manhattan and has
programs in Sao Paulo in Brazil
and in Shenzhen.
For his latest big idea, Whittle
assembled a high-powered team
of educators and advisers. Among
them were Nicholas Dirks, former
chancellor of the University of
California at Berkeley; and Jim
Hawkins, former headmaster of
the venerable Harrow School in
England.
“Chris had a really compelling
vision for not only a great school,
but a great network of schools,”
said Tom Vander Ark, a promi-
nent education consultant and
former schools superintendent,
who until 2019 chaired an educa-
tional advisory board for Whittle.
“Like everything Whittle does, it
was grand and initially well-resourced. I think in the end, he
ran out of money for a variety of
reasons, including but not limited
to the pandemic.”
Some of the big names, includ-
ing Dirks and Hawkins, have left
the company’s top level. There
has been churn, too, at the D.C.
campus. Manuel J. Rivera, who
had been global head of faculty
recruitment, last year became
head of the campus.
“Yeah, it’s been challenging,”
Rivera said in an interview. But
the campus continues to operate,
he said, and it is recruiting for thefall. A top priority is to draw
international boarding students.
“We’re small now. There are
advantages to being small,” Rive-
ra said. “And we’ll be small again
next year. That’s a given.” He
hopes to enroll 150 to 200 stu-
dents in the fall, calling that a
“reasonable, achievable” number.
Several parents who pulled
their children from the school
declined to discuss their reasons
for the record. One expressed dis-
satisfaction with the curriculum;
others worried about faculty
turnover and s chool f inances.
Whittle defended the quality of
education the school has provid-
ed but acknowledged some par-
ents are skittish. He said he has
sought to keep them informed
about financial realities, opting
for a policy of transparency in a
bid to secure as much support as
possible from the parent commu-
nity.
On March 1, for example, Whit-
tle provided families with an up-
date on negotiations with poten-
tial investors. He expressed opti-
mism that “we are on a path to
concluding this capital program
within 30 days, with 45 days being
the latest,” according to a copy of a
letter that a parent provided to
The W ashington Post. He added:
“I want to thank you for your
immense patience as I know how
anxiety-producing these days
have been. I also know that you
may be thinking ‘is it really going
to happen this time.’ The answer
is the four of us believe, if we stick
together and continue the good
progress of the past few days, yes,
we will succeed!”
As of this week, Whittle ac-
knowledged to The Post, the long-
term investments he is seeking
had not yet been concluded. He
cited progress, including the refi-
nancing of a building loan, which
removed a foreclosure threat that
had shadowed the property
where the school is based. (The
school is a tenant.) A broader
capital package, he said, “is what
we’re working on literally at this
moment.”
Transparency is a “doubled-
edged sword,” Whittle said. It can
lead parents to demand more
information even when deals
h aven’t been fully executed, con-
tributing to a sense that financial
stability is perpetually elusive, al-
ways just around the next corner.
“You just can’t believe how diffi-
cult that has been,” Whittle said.
But transparency did help
solve the payroll crisis in Decem-
ber. “I was really struggling,” he
said, “and families stepped up. It
was a nice Christmas Eve in that
regard.”Cash c runch imperils Whittle School, its global ambitions
BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
From left, Calla O’Neil, Rachael Muresan and Charlotte Weir give a tour this month of Whittle School.
They’ll be among the 14 in its first commencement in D.C. this week and give their campus high marks.“He opened his doorsand got hit by atsunami.”
Thomas Toch, Georgetown University
expert on the region’s private school
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