HONOLULU POLICE DEPARTMENT
Gregory Tartamella
Select an option below to continue reading this premium story.
Already a Honolulu Star-Advertiser subscriber? Log in now to continue reading.
The parent whose profanity-laced confrontation with the head football coach cut short last year’s Kaiser High School football season is no longer fighting the charges against him.
Much of Gregory Tartamella’s confrontation with head coach Arnold Martinez was captured on cellphone video.
Tartamella, 41, pleaded no contest Monday to assaulting Martinez, threatening Vice Principal Kevin Dias and harassing Martinez and school security guard Nick Hironaka.
The harassment charges are petty misdemeanors punishable by no more than 30 days in jail. The assault and threatening charges are Class C felonies punishable by up to five years in prison because they involve victims performing their duties as educational workers or within an educational facility.
Martinez is a teacher at Kaiser.
At sentencing in October, Tartamella will ask state Circuit Judge Faauuga Tootoo for an opportunity to avoid conviction by deferring his no-contest pleas. Tartamella pleaded no contest without a plea deal after Tootoo rejected his request to dismiss the charges against him and Deputy Prosecutor Catherine Lowenberg said she would not be offering a deal.
Kaiser Principal Justin Mew announced that the school was canceling the rest of the football season and forfeiting the rest of its games one day after the Sept. 17 school campus confrontation.
Martinez stepped down as head coach 11 days later.