Downs alleged that he was assaulted by parent Cory Ellis at the December 20 swim team meeting.
A Spotsylvania General District Court judge on Tuesday dismissed former Riverbend High School principal Xavier Downs’s assault case against Cory Ellis, the parent of a student on the varsity swim team, with strong words for all parties involved.
“This whole thing is ridiculous,” said Richard McGrath, the presiding judge. “This is all the result of people who are unable to control themselves in public. We can’t have civil discourse anymore. I’m ashamed.”
McGrath chastised Downs for waiting over a month after the contentious December 20, 2023, meeting between school administration and swim team parents to allege that he had been assaulted by Ellis, and he chastised Ellis’s attorney, G. Price Koch, for attempting to bring in “cumulative evidence.”
“The only evidence I’m going to hear is whether [Ellis] hit [Downs] with his elbow,” McGrath said.
Two rows of the courtroom were filled with the parents of student-athletes who were present at the December 20 meeting and prepared to be called as witnesses for Ellis, but the only witness for Ellis that McGrath would hear was Joseph Adriani, the husband of head swim coach Rachael Adriani.
Adriani said there was a point during the meeting when he believed, based on Downs’s words and demeanor, that Downs wanted to fight him. He said Ellis and Marshall Keene, the school division’s coordinator of school safety and security, stepped in front of Downs and that Ellis used his elbow to prevent Downs from attacking him.
Downs—who represented himself on Tuesday after prosecutors said the Commonwealth of Virginia was no longer involved in the case—said he had no intention of fighting anyone and that he was trying to leave the meeting to go to his office.
Downs played a video showing the interaction in question several times in court on Tuesday.
McGrath allowed one witness to testify on Downs’s behalf. The witness did not state her name and McGrath did not ask her to provide it, but other swim team parents in attendance identified her to the Advance as a parent who was upset over a new coaching model introduced by the swim team coaches that precipitated the December 20 meeting.
The witness said she was not physically present at the meeting but that she was watching it live and that “the video shows everything I saw.”
The witness also said there were others watching the meeting remotely with her.
“There were a bunch of people in the office [with me] who saw it,” she said.
Koch tried to determine what exactly the witness and those with her would have been able to see from the position of the camera, and he and the witness began to argue. McGrath again intervened to stress that he was only interested in the interaction between Ellis and Downs.
“This criminal proceeding is about one moment,” he said.
Koch said that the video shows “incidental contact” for the purpose of de-escalating a tense situation, and not assault.
“We have a number of other witnesses who would say the same,” he said.
But McGrath was done listening.
“Where are we going as a society?” he questioned. “People ought to be able to forgive each other. Good gosh. This case is dismissed. You’re all free to go.”
