A bond of $10,000 with several conditions was set Thursday for the North Georgia teacher who fired a gun in his classroom late last month.
Randal Davidson, 53, a social studies teacher at Dalton High School and the radio voice of the school’s football and basketball teams, had been in the Whitfield County jail since the Feb. 28 incident before being released on bond Thursday afternoon.
Also, a Dalton Public Schools spokeswoman said Davidson’s contract will not be renewed for next year.
“He will not be back next year, for sure,” Pat Holloway told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In addition to the money, bond conditions set by the Whitfield County Superior Court say:
• Davidson must wear an electronic monitoring device when he leaves the jail. He also must pay the enrollment and daily fees for the monitoring.
• He can’t go onto any Dalton Public School System property and can’t contact any school system employee, student or any student’s family member, except through his attorney.
• He must be evaluated at the Hamilton Medical Center emergency room and be admitted and evaluated at a behavioral health facility.
• Dalton police will be able to search his home and car for guns.
"What the bond order does basically is he remains in custody, but rather than being at the jail, he will be at a mental health facility," District Attorney Bert Poston told the Dalton Daily Citizen. "He will be at a secure, in-patient facility and he will be monitored 24 hours a day.
“We expect this will be several weeks of evaluation and then he will go back to jail. In the meantime, we will prepare the case for the grand jury."
The gunshot incident began when some students tried to get into Davidson’s classroom and he would not let them in, Dalton police spokesman Bruce Frazier said.
The students told Principal Steve Bartoo. When he came to the door and used his key to try to open it, Davidson forcibly closed it on him, Frazier said.
The principal then heard a gunshot. The bullet went through a window and outside, Frazier said.
After about 30 to 45 minutes, authorities got Davidson to surrender.
Police said Davidson used a snub-nosed .38 revolver. Although guns aren’t allowed on the campus, Frazier said Davidson brought the gun into class in his computer case.
Charges against Davidson are aggravated assault, carrying a weapon on school grounds, terroristic threats, reckless conduct, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and disrupting a public school, Frazier said.
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