A former school custodian in South Jersey will remain behind bars while he waits to be tried on charges that he sprayed bleach and put human waste in food that was served to students.
Prosecutors are seeking 10 to 20 years for 25-year-old Giovanni Impellizzeri, who was a janitor at Elizabeth Moore School in Upper Deerfield Township since 2019. He was arrested last week.
He is accused of intentionally trying to get students sick by urinating in serving bowls, spraying bleach on fresh vegetables, mixing feces into taco meat, wiping his rear end with hoagie rolls, and performing sexual acts with objects in the school.
Prosecuting attorney Lindsey Seidel said Impellizzeri bragged about his actions on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
“Throwing the rolls on the floor, mixing them around in the dirt and stepping on them before securing them back into the bread bag, and then placing them back onto the tray with the other bags of rolls,” she described.
“There’s also a video from the defendant’s phone where he takes a sponge from a sink in what appears to be the teachers’ lounge. He uses the sponge to wipe urinals and clean the toilet before putting the sponge back where he got it from.”
At a hearing Thursday, prosecutors showed messages allegedly sent by the defendant, in which he said doing these obscene acts aroused him and he was doing the “devil’s work.”
He wrote, “Honestly, I put bleach in their food before. They were fine, just a little sick. But oh well, not my problem.”
After his arrest and a search of his phone, new charges of child pornography were filed against him.
The defense argued that Impellizzeri’s actions were a cry for help and there was no need to detain him because he had the support of his family. Mental illness or not, the judge said the defendant is a risk to the community.
“If he can’t control himself in an elementary school setting, what is to stop him from attempting similar things in a McDonald’s or a grocery store?” Seidel said.
Authorities have taken samples from Impellizzeri to determine whether he had any infectious diseases. The school district put him on administrative leave.