DOCUMENT: K-12, Crime

Student Busted For Yearbook Defacement

Cops: Teen added Hitler quote, terrorism reference

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Yearbook Arrest

JULY 12--A Connecticut teenager has been arrested on computer crime charges for allegedly illegally accessing a database and editing his high school’s yearbook to include an Adolf Hitler quotation and references to drugs and one of the Boston Marathon bombers, police report.

Investigators charge that Hollister Tryon, 18, manipulated entries in the Glastonbury High School 2021 yearbook by “unlawfully accessing a computer database students used to submit their yearbook quotes.”

According to a Glastonbury Police Department report, school administrators in May “reported the discovery of an Adolf Hitler quote which was incorrectly attributed to George Floyd,” the Minnesota man killed last year by police.

The Hitler quote attributed to Floyd appeared beneath the senior portrait of a male student.

Another student’s quote was edited to include drug references and the name of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted on terrorism charges in connection with the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.

A police probe of the database intrusion resulted in Tryon’s arrest Friday on a pair of felony computer crimes charges.

The school yearbook was recalled after copies were initially distributed to members of the school’s senior class. In a letter sent in late-May to students and parents, school administrators apologized for not detecting “the act of bigotry and vandalism before the yearbook was printed. We are examining and will revise our yearbook procedures for collecting and reviewing future student submissions.”

Tryon, seen above, is scheduled to appear in court August 6. (1 page)