ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, February 22, 1997            TAG: 9702240064
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-4  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER

PRINCIPAL'S WARRANT CHARGES THAT IRATE MOTHER STRUCK HIM

A Roanoke school principal has obtained a warrant charging a parent with assaulting him after he asked her to leave his office because she was pounding his desk and yelling.

Richard Poindexter, principal of Roanoke Academy for Mathematics and Science, said Kathy Lynn Dales of the 2500 block of Edinburgh Drive Northwest struck him in the mouth and nose Thursday as he prepared to close his office door.

Dales, 39, is the mother of a fifth-grader at the school. School officials had asked her to come to the school to discuss her child's disruptive behavior, Poindexter said.

Poindexter had taken the child's cap after he refused to remove it.

When Dales arrived at the school, she demanded the cap be returned to her son, began screaming and beating on his desk, the principal said. Poindexter said the woman also hit him in the arm and he asked her to leave at this point. As he turned to close the door, he said, she struck him in the face.

Dales could not be reached for comment Friday.

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