BURLINGTON — The woman charged with threatening two teenagers with a deadly weapon on a public city beach is an employee of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Karlotta Isham, 47, of Burlington, pleaded not guilty Monday to a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly pointing an air rifle at two teenage boys at Leddy Beach Friday night. The boys told police the woman had claimed to be an “officer” before she confronted them with the air gun.
Isham informed police investigating the incident that she was a DHS employee, according to Jon Murad, deputy police chief. Murad said he exchanged emails with the agency, including sharing the charging documents, but declined to comment on whether DHS confirmed she was an employee.
“That’s a DHS personnel issue,” Murad said.
Anita Rios Moore, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of DHS, confirmed that Isham is a DHS employee.
“USCIS is aware of the arrest of Karlotta Isham,” she said. “She is currently an employee of the USCIS Vermont Service Center.”
Murad stressed that Isham was not a federal law enforcement agent despite her claims to the boys.
“Had she been a federal law enforcement officer, I would be completely forthcoming that we arrested a fellow law enforcement officer for that crime,” he said.
Isham faces up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for the aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge.
The two teenage boys said that they feared for their lives after Isham pointed a Stoger air rifle at them, according to the affidavit in the case.
Officer Jake Sawtelle wrote that he responded to Leddy Beach at approximately 9:30 p.m. Sept. 6, and spoke to one of the teenagers. The teenager said Isham and her husband asked them to move a fire the boys had made away from their house, which they did.
But the boy said Isham later returned “heavily intoxicated” and told the boys to leave the beach “before something bad happens.” After one of the boys threatened to call the police, Isham said that she was an officer, the boys said.
She returned to the beach minutes later with what was later determined to be an air rifle and pointed it at them, the boys said.
“[Redacted] advised she was about 35 feet away and aiming the weapon at [him] before he fled the area,” the policer affidavit states. “[Redacted] advised he believed he was going to die because this woman was pointing a weapon at him.”
Isham told police that she went to the beach earlier in the night with her husband to tell the boys to leave. She told officers that the boys were being combative.
Isham initially told the officers that she did not have a weapon and told them she was a federal agent.
An officer then asked Isham if she had any shotguns or rifles in the house. Isham told him that she had a .22 rifle but it was unloaded and locked up, and she had not brought it to the beach.
Asked again if she brought the gun to the beach, Isham said that she had but that it was a pellet gun and if the Burlington Police Department was doing its job, the boys would not be allowed to build a fire on the beach.
“She stated she called the police to report the fire, but Burlington police and fire dispatch had no records of any calls from her or husband or any residents to report the fire on the beach behind her residence,” Sawtelle wrote.
Officers then retrieved the weapon from Isham’s residence.
Murad said in the department’s press release announcing the arrest that he was aware of “frustrations” neighbors were having about after-hours activity in the vicinity of Leddy Beach.
“But neighbors in Burlington cannot take the law into their own hands and threaten people with firearms, imitation or not, over campfires,” he said.
Isham was released without bail on the condition that she not have contact with the two teenagers.
Bob Katims, Isham’s lawyer, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a phone number connected to Isham was disconnected.
Correction: An earlier version of this story referred imprecisely to the weapon that Isham was holding. It was an air rifle, not a firearm
