DPS employee charged with falsifying fire safety tests, inspection forms

WRAL News learned this from criminal charges filed Tuesday against Andrew Roesch.

It’s troubling news for parents to hear. Roesch is accused of falsifying fire safety records at three schools.

This investigation started over the summer and also involves another high-ranking County employee.

According to a warrant, Roesch was the Durham Public Schools employee tasked with the important job of testing fire alarms at schools.

According to a criminal summons – he was not doing that.

Instead, the document states he was “falsifying that he performed fire alarm tests and inspection forms … by copying year 2020’s information onto year 2021”.

The summons said he did so at Fayetteville, Hillandale and Southwest Elementary schools.

According to the warrant, Roesch admitted to not completing tests and falsifying records. Roesch faces charges for three counts of “failure to perform duties” – a misdemeanor.

The high-stakes nature of his job was revealed in April.

There was a fire at Fayetteville Elementary School at two in the morning and the fire alarm did not go off. That prompted an investigation by the state’s Department of Insurance Criminal Investigations Division.

That investigation is ongoing.

Durham Public Schools told WRAL News that after the April fire Roesch resigned in May.

In June, DPS took new steps to ensure safety.

In a statement, a school spokesperson told WRAL News:

“Since June 1, 2022, we have contracted with a number of life safety vendors to ensure that we are fully meeting our responsibilities to inspect our fire detection and prevention systems…The safety of our students and staff remains our highest priority.”

WRAL News has reached out to Roesch to try to hear his perspective on what happened.