`Lakeview grad’s appearance gets him a court date`

By Erin Remai
Herald Staff Writer

William Clair Putnam, 20, of 1627 Georgetown Road, Sandy Lake, wasn’t looking for trouble when he showed up at Lakeview High School on June 4 dressed in a black trench coat and a black and white jester’s hat with his face painted gray and black.

He was just waiting for some friends to come out of school. But school officials, startled by Putnam’s appearance, called the police anyway.

“The principal said you can’t be here looking like that, so I went across the street,” Putnam, a 1998 Lakeview High School graduate, said. “He said, ‘I called the cops on you.’ So I smoked a cigarette and waited for the cops across the street.”

Lakeview principal Alan Balderelli said that with everything that had happened in schools locally and nationally the past couple months, Putnam’s appearance was enough to cause a disturbance at the school. He said students who saw Putnam through the windows were nervous.

Putnam was dressed similarly to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two students who staged the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

Putnam said Sandy Lake police chief Donald Oakes picked him up and took him to the Mercer state police barracks, where he was cited for disorderly conduct.

“Just because of what I looked like, they arrested me,” Putnam said.

Oakes said Putnam was arrested because his appearance frightened school officials and students. “With the appearance of the individual, there was some alarm,” he said Thursday. Putnam filed his not guilty plea Friday morning at District Justice Larry Silvis’s office in Worth Township. A hearing date has not yet been set. If he is found guilty he must pay a $300 fine.

Putnam said state police told him if he wears his trench coat or hat or paints his face again, he’ll be arrested again. State Trooper Joseph Katavitch declined comment Thursday.

Putnam said police did not mention violence or the incident in Littleton when they picked him up, but later at the barracks they asked him what he thought about Harris and Klebold.

“I said those kids did what they did. I had no connection. I just wear my trench coat because I like to wear my trench coat,” he said.

He added that while attending Lakeview High School he often wore his trench coat to class and was never disciplined. Also, two of his friends wear trench coats on a regular basis.

“They haven’t gotten into trouble,” he said.

Allied News Correspondent Shelby Clark contributed to this story.

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Updated June 11, 1999
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