A Carroll County school board candidate who allegedly threatened to kill his father may not contact his parents for a year, a judge ruled Monday.
District Judge Marc G. Rasinsky granted a protective order sought by Homer Leon and Beatrice Phelps, parents of candidate Draper S. Phelps, 28, now in Spring Grove Hospital Center in Catonsville, an inpatient psychiatric facility.
Draper Phelps used a knife to hold his father down and attempted sexual acts against his parents, according to the application for a protective order his father filed Dec. 31.
“He was going to kill me and marry his mother because he says that I can?t take as good of care of her,” Homer Phelps said in court, adding that his son last threatened him on Christmas. “The police told us to take him back to his residence, and on the way back, he tried to jump out three times.”
The son did not attend the hearing and could not be reached for comment.
Homer Phelps said his son should not have been able to file to run for the school board because he is mentally ill but declined to name the illness.
“He really didn?t know what he was doing when he did that,” Homer Phelps said of his son?s filing to run. “He?s very ill.”
Children?s safety would be his top priority as a school board member, Draper wrote in an e-mail Jan. 2, responding to questions about his campaign.
“Draper S. Phelps believes that there ought to be much more police officers inside and around the school system to protect our children from known predators that lurk around the schools, because we cannot afford to lose innocent lives of our children,” he wrote. “In my eyes, protection should come first before everything else.”
Draper Phelps has lived with his parents in Westminster for at least four months in the past year, according to the court records filed last week.
