GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A petty argument over items and an alleged false report of a school threat prompted Godfrey-Lee Public Schools to cancel classes back in May.
Investigators believe all of it, what one woman claimed to have happened, was a lie.
Godfrey-Lee Public Schools canceled class following a threat that was later deemed "not credible."
That was on May 13.
In five days, a woman charged with falsifying a police report will be arraigned for her connection to the false shooting. It's a misdemeanor charge.
That woman's name is Nikole Pipoly.
Nicholas Surman was the man she accused of making a school threat. Nicholas says the story is a wild and bizarre one. He's never been charged with anything in connection to a threat.
Police records from Wyoming Public Safety obtained by FOX 17 show that investigators believe there was no threat at all. The prosecutor's office reviewed the report and declined to charge Surman, records show.
“She ended up responding by taking it to a level of which no one could have ever anticipated,” Surman said.
Nicholas, the man accused, says he's disappointed the evidence only resulted in misdemeanor charges.
“I was a little disappointed that the charge is a misdemeanor just because ... it’s such a serious thing to make a false report related to a school, especially with the kind of things that we’re going through in today’s society,” Surman said.
Nikole Pipoly worked in Godfrey-Lee Public Schools as a contracted employee. She was a social worker with the Family Outreach Center (FOC) in Grand Rapids. The FOC told FOX 17 Pipoly is no longer employed with them.
On Sunday, May 12, the elementary school principal contacted police saying a man Pipoly knows threatened to harm her and "shoot up" Godfrey-Lee the following day.
“When I found that out, I took the day off work. I drove down to the police department, gave detectives my phone. [I] said, 'Here. Forensically analyze this, whatever you need to do to show that I never made a phone call,'” Surman said.
Surman says the alleged phone call where he supposedly made a threat never happened.
“She said that I apparently called her and that I said that I was going to apparently rape her and shoot her over a hat, which just seemed absolutely bizarre and asinine,” Surman said.
Nicholas says why he thinks what Nikole said what she said is a wild story.
You see, Surman and Pipoly had hung out on Friday, May 10.
“A couple weeks ago, I had went on a date with a woman I met on the Hinge app. It was like a porch hangout,” Nicholas Surman said.
Nicholas was wearing a Supreme name-brand hat.
“It just seemed weird from the beginning, that whole situation,” Surman said.
Nicholas says Nikole took his hat, went inside from the porch, and put it in her room. He wanted it back that weekend because it's his favorite hat.
Nikole told authorities according to reports obtained by FOX 17 that Nicholas insisted on leaving the hat behind.
Things escalated from there.
Police reports say Surman took one of Pipoly's patio chairs as some kind of bargaining chip to get his hat back.
“Kind of like a silly dispute, like, okay, she has a hat; I have a chair; she bring me the hat back; she’ll get the chair back, end of story,” Surman said.
The two would never end up exchanging items. There was some back-and-forth via text. Pipoly told police the threat happened during a phone call the day after the hangout.
“They look through my phone. We pull forensics. We meet at AT&T. They pull all my phone records. I made one phone call to her, and that was Friday, the day I went over to her house. She called me and asked me to grab drinks for her and her friends. It was actually a 40-seconds phone call,” Surman said.
Investigators say phone records only show one call between the two and it happened on May 10, the day of the get together.
What's even more interesting is Surman claims he didn't even know Pipoly worked at Godfrey-Lee. In text messages, he asks to make the exchange, the hat for the chair, at Pine Rest. That's where he says he thought she worked.
In subsequent interviews, Pipoly appears to backtrack. She tells one officer a threat was made. She tells another, according to the report, that there was no threat at all.
“It’s to the point of where it shuts down the entire district. All the families have to take a day off. Somebody could have been on a points system at their work. … They could have lost their job because of this. It affects more than just me,” Surman said.
FOX 17 reached out to Damian Nunzio, Pipoly's attorney. He told FOX 17 she's pleading not guilty and that she is innocent of the charges.
Follow FOX 17: Facebook - X (formerly Twitter) - Instagram - YouTube
