Reporter Sharon Montague can be reached at 822-1411 or by e-mail at smontague@salina.com.
Salina Journal
Connie Olson knew her ex-husband, Gary, was upset, and she tried to calm him as she drove her two sons to school the morning of Sept. 5.
The two had argued earlier, at home, about whether the boys should ride the bus to Southeast of Saline School, where Connie Olson taught and they attended class, or whether she would drive them. She left the house with the boys with the issue unresolved, and he followed seconds later in his pickup truck. He passed her at a high rate of speed, she said.
Gary Olson called his ex-wife on her cell phone, and the discussion continued.
"He was upset," Connie Olson testified Friday, in Gary Olson's preliminary hearing in Saline County District Court. "He said he was going to settle this bus issue."
But the conversation quickly turned to other topics as well, with Gary Olson saying, " 'I am so tired of you trying to control my life,' " Connie Olson said.
She said she pleaded with Gary Olson to leave their personal problems at home and not bring them to the school.
"Then, he just busted out with, 'Maybe I should just take this gun that I have in the pickup and just kill you,' " Connie Olson said. "My heart just stopped. ... I was scared. I think I started shaking."
Gary Olson followed that up with a reference to Columbine, which made Connie Olson think he planned to take a gun into the school and shoot people, as two Columbine High School students did in their Littleton, Colo., school in 1999. The two boys killed 13 people and wounded 24 others before shooting and killing themselves.
The night before at the school, Connie Olson said, Gary Olson attended an anti-bullying program called Rachel's Challenge. The program was started by the family of a girl killed at Columbine.
Ordered to stand trial
The testimony of Connie Olson and of a Saline County sheriff's deputy and Southeast of Saline officials was enough for District Judge Daniel Hebert to bind Gary Olson over on charges of making a criminal threat and aggravated criminal threat.
Defense attorney Roger Struble waived formal arraignment and entered not guilty pleas on Gary Olson's behalf. Trial was set for 9 a.m. Jan. 22.
Hebert modified conditions of Gary Olson's bond after the hearing, so that he may have supervised visits with his two children. But Hebert stressed that Gary Olson is still to have no contact with Connie Olson and not enter any Southeast of Saline School District facility.
Olson is a Southeast of Saline School Board member, but this week, he wasn't at the its September board meeting.
Struble questioned whether he or Gary Olson could respond to correspondence from the school district regarding Gary Olson's position as a school board member. Hebert indicated that until the criminal case is resolved, Olson is suspended from any activity on the school board.
She tried to calm him
In her testimony Friday, Connie Olson said she kept trying to calm Gary Olson, to de-escalate the situation.
The couple had been divorced, but reconciled and were living together on Sept. 5.
Connie Olson said Gary Olson pulled into the parking lot at Southeast of Saline School, and she pulled in and parked away from him. She continued to talk to him on her cell phone as she walked into the building with her children.
At one point, she said, Gary Olson threatened to kill himself.
"I was very scared," Connie Olson said. "I could not get through to him."
Gary Olson hung up the phone and drove away from the school.
Connie Olson said she went to the couple's home and retrieved all of their firearms, which she took to a friend's house for safekeeping. She called her counselor from the friend's house, and the counselor told her to call the Saline County Sheriff's Office, which she did.
By the time she returned to the school, officials had locked all of the children in their classrooms and locked the exterior doors in response to Gary Olson's mention of the Columbine murders. Sheriff's deputies guarded the parking lot, watching out for Gary Olson. He was arrested later, away from the school. He did not have a weapon at that time, authorities said.
When's a threat a threat?
Struble questioned why Connie Olson pulled into the school parking lot after Gary Olson had said he had a weapon and threatened to kill her, and why she took the children into the school after he had mentioned Columbine. He asked whether she had taken the threats seriously.
"I took it very much to heart," she said.
She said she thought that as long as she kept Gary Olson on the phone, he wouldn't shoot. And she said that she thought the children would be safe inside the school, because of the district's lockdown procedures.
"I did the best I could under the circumstances," she said.
Struble said that Connie Olson told a sheriff's deputy later that she was "90 percent sure" that Gary Olson wouldn't go through with the threats.
"Any percentage, when someone is making a threat, is too much," Connie Olson said.
nReporter Sharon Montague can be reached at 822-1411 or by e-mail at smontague@salina.com.
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