Ricky Garvin resigned his position as Charleston High School principal last Thursday, the same day he was scheduled to appear in Tallahatchie County Circuit Court for a probable cause hearing in a case featuring allegations that he fondled a minor student at the school.
The hearing was a late scratch, however, after Garvin, 56, waived his right to the proceeding before Circuit Judge Jimmy McClure, District Attorney John Champion said Tuesday.
Champion explained that in cases involving allegations of criminal wrongdoing against “persons of trust,” including school officials, law enforcement officers and others, a hearing is held in front of a judge, who hears arguments and issues a ruling on whether or not probable cause exists to issue an arrest warrant.
The case against Garvin, 56, who has not been formally charged with any wrongdoing, will be presented to the Tallahatchie County grand jury, Champion noted. The next scheduled grand jury session is April 24.
Contacted for comment, East Tallahatchie School District Superintendent Ben Kennedy released a written statement confirming that Garvin had stepped down after two years as CHS principal.
“The East Tallahatchie School Board accepted the resignation of high school principal Ricky Garvin at its regularly scheduled school board meeting on April 12. The resignation was effective immediately,” Kennedy wrote in a Friday morning email to The Sun-Sentinel.
Kennedy said Assistant Principal Chris Rankin will lead CHS for the rest of the school term.
According to court documents on file Tuesday at the circuit clerk’s office in Charleston, Garvin has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
A petition seeking the probable cause hearing against Garvin, filed March 26 by Tallahatchie County Prosecuting Attorney Carol Turner, noted that the “charges of fondling against Ricky Garvin” encompass “more than one incident beginning in August of 2017.”
The alleged incidences occurred “during school hours,” the document said.
Although he has not responded publicly to the specific allegations against him, Garvin, in a letter to the editor which he submitted for publication in the March 22 edition of The Sun-Sentinel, denied approaching any student “in any inappropriate manner.”
At the time, Garvin wrote that the letter’s purpose was to respond to “a certain allegation” voiced by a parent that called into question his “professionalism and integrity.”
Garvin, a longtime educator and school administrator in Bolivar and Tallahatchie counties, also is a licensed minister serving in his 10th year as pastor and founder of a nondenominational Charleston church.
