Friday, February 1, 2008

Dallas ISD fire started near gay worker’s desk

By John Wright of Dallas Voice

Kristine Vowels

An openly gay Dallas schools employee says she doesn’t believe she was the target of a recent arson on the Lincoln High School campus despite the fact that the fire reportedly was lit near her desk.

Kristine Vowels works in the grant-writing department that was housed in the old Lincoln High School building in the 5000 block of Malcolm X Boulevard. At about 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 14, a three-alarm fire broke out in a former classroom that served as the department’s offices, causing about $1 million in damages.

Vowels, who made waves in the Dallas Independent School District last year after she formed a citizens’ committee to address LGBT issues, said investigators have told her the fire was started using an electric space heater from under her desk and an accelerant.

Vowels said she kept a gay Pride flag in a coffee mug on the desk, and she’d hung news reports about LGBT issues nearby. But she said she hasn’t heard anything from investigators to indicate the arson was motivated by anti-gay bias.

“My approach has been to let them carry on with their investigation,” said Vowels, who’s temporarily working out of DISD’s central offices downtown. “I’m just trying to do my job and stay on task with my deadlines. This is not something I’m really taking personally at this point.”

Vowels said investigators who interviewed her since the fire didn’t ask about her status as an openly gay employee or her involvement with the committee. But she said she expects to meet with them again soon.

The Dallas Fire Department has been tightlipped about the investigation thus far.

DFD spokesman Paul Lara confirmed in an interview with Dallas Voice that an accelerant was used to start the fire and that it is being investigated as an arson.

Lara said he forwarded an e-mail from Dallas Voice with additional questions to the investigators, who hadn’t contacted the newspaper by press time.

“For now, I would just sit tight and let the process take its course,” Lara said in an e-mail. “They are not going to tell me anything final until they have something tangible. … At this point it is not certain whether or not this will be a hate crime issue. Let us wait for the investigators to gather up all the facts.”

DISD spokesman Jon Dahlender referred questions about the investigation to the Fire Department.

Dahlender dismissed speculation that the fire may have been intended to destroy records. He said records related to recent controversies involving district grant spending were not kept in the offices that burned. He added that all records destroyed in the fire can be recreated.

Dahlender said he was not aware the fire had started near the desk of an openly gay employee.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of that,” he said.

Pegasus News content partner - Dallas Voice
The community newspaper for gay & lesbian Dallas.

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• Dallas ISD > Dallas ISD High Schools > Lincoln