Stakeouts used in investigation of Northern High
GREENSBORO — In the days after Northern Guilford High School won the 2009 3-A boys basketball state title, coaches and players attributed their success to the long hours and extra work they put in before and during the season.
In court documents released Wednesday, Guilford County Schools appears to have taken a page from the Nighthawks’ playbook, going to great lengths to prove that some of the players on that team were ineligible.
Daylong stakeouts. Interviews with landlords and neighbors. Voting records. Utility bills. Even online videos. No scrap of information seemed too small for school system investigators, who ultimately ruled the Nighthawks used two ineligible players — a ruling that was later used to strip the team of its championship.
School system officials believe J.R. Gant and Asad Lamot, two key players during the Nighthawks’ playoff run, lived outside the school’s attendance zone — Gant within Northeast Guilford High School’s school boundaries and Lamot in Mebane, where he would have attended Eastern Alamance High.
The documents were part of a defense motion by Guilford County Schools to dismiss a lawsuit brought this month by the students’ families.
Superior Court Judge Shannon Joseph dismissed the families’ motion for a temporary injunction that would have reinstated the students’ athletics eligibility and allowed them to return to Northern Guilford. Both would be high school seniors this year.
Lamot enrolled Tuesday at Oak Ridge Military Academy, where former Northern Guilford basketball coach Stan Kowalewski now coaches. Sources said Wednesday night that Gant has yet to register at Northeast Guilford, the school to which he was reassigned.
School system officials have divulged little about their 10-month investigation, and Jill Wilson, the system’s attorney, declined to talk about the nature of the investigation. Neither the Gants nor the Lamots could be reached Wednesday for comment.
Court documents entered as part of the case paint a picture of Guilford County Schools employees spending hours building a case against the Gants and Lamots — and of the families’ attempts to stay ahead of the investigation.
In some instances, the evidence gathered in the schools system’s report was obtained through extensive interviews and staking out houses. Other times investigators needed only to Google the students’ names for damning evidence.
The documents show several exhibits — utility bills, property records, voter registration forms and driver’s licenses — indicating that the Gants live in Northeast Guilford’s attendance zone and the Lamots live in Mebane.
School system officials even referenced several videos posted on MySpace, a social networking Web site, showing Asad Lamot playing basketball outside his parents’ Mebane home.
Affidavits also indicate that Northern Guilford maintained poor records for student eligibility. Indeed, in many cases, there were no eligibility records at all for some students.
But the most damning evidence focuses on the Gants and Lamots’ attempts to rent a house within Northern Guilford’s school district.
In one affidavit, Greensboro landlord Jennifer Al-Jaouni said she met with Tim Gant in July 2007. Tim Gant told Al-Jaouni he was interested in renting her home on North Church Street.
Al-Jaouni offered to show Tim Gant the house, according to the affidavit, but he declined, saying he didn’t need to see the inside of the house.
Tim Gant rented the house starting Aug. 1, 2007. Days later, J.R. Gant enrolled at Northern Guilford. According to the affidavit, Al-Jaouni said Tim Gant made his last rent payment in May 2008. At the time, Gant told Al-Jaouni his family never moved into the house and only rented it so their son could attend Northern. In April of this year, the Lamot family tried to rent the same house.
In another affidavit, Carla Alphin, chief investigator for the school system, recalls knocking on the door of a modest white clapboard house on Spencer-Dixon Road. The house, directly across the street from Northern Guilford, was rented by Marian Lamot — Asad Lamot’s mother, according to Northern Guilford records.
The woman who met Alphin at the door was gruff, according to Alphin. She said she was the Lamots’ housekeeper and that the family was not home. Alphin, who noticed a girl standing in the hallway, handed the woman a business card and told her to have Marian Lamot call her.
When Marian Lamot didn’t call, Alphin returned early the next day. Only this time she parked her car across the road. Minutes later, the woman claiming to be the Lamots’ housekeeper came outside in a house coat to dump garbage into a trash can, according to Alphin. Later that morning the landlord and a middle school-aged girl showed up and entered the house without knocking.
Finally, Asad Lamot showed up in a car and knocked on the front door of the home before someone let him in. Lamot stayed for a few minutes before crossing the street to start the school day.
The next day, April 10, Marian Lamot tried to rent Al-Jaouni’s home on North Church Street — the house that previously had been rented by the Gant family.
According to another affidavit, Al-Jaouni said Lamot seemed eager to rent the house that day, even though the house was in the midst of major renovations and had no appliances.
By then it was too late. Northern Guilford principal Joe Yeager and Athletics Director Derrell Force had resigned from the school that afternoon. And Guilford County Schools officials announced they were investigating the eligibility of several student-athletes.
Contact Robert Bell at 373-7055 or robert.bell@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Northern Guilford High School
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