Staff Reports
Niagara Gazette
May 13, 2008 09:38 pm
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Two Wilson baseball coaches pleaded not guilty to a charge of endangering the welfare of a child in Town of Wilson Court on Tuesday night.
The coaches, Thomas Baia and William Atlas, were charged April 29 in connection with the alleged assault of at least two students by fellow students on a district school bus last month.
The coaches’ case has been adjourned until June 26, said Wilson Town Court Justice George Berger.
State police said the incident occurred April 17 on a bus carrying members of the varsity and junior varsity baseball teams, as they returned to Wilson from Niagara Falls.
Three varsity baseball players are accused of assaulting at least two members of the junior varsity team on the floor in the back of the bus. Baia and Atlas were on the bus at the time, state police said. Both were suspended from coaching when school administrators learned of the investigation, and the varsity baseball season has been canceled.
Atlas, 35, is a physical education teacher at Thomas Marks Elementary School in Wilson and Baia, 40, also of Wilson, is a math teacher at Wilson Middle School. They have been suspended with pay from teaching.
The students — 18-year-old Geoffrey A. Seefeldt and 16-year-olds Colton J. Sherman and Christopher A. Sidote — have been charged with various counts of endangering the welfare of a child and third-degree aggravated sexual abuse.
They are scheduled to appear in Wilson Town Court on May 22.
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