(TargetDailyNews.com) – A former employee of a Baltimore-area high school has been arrested and charged with stalking after he digitally impersonated the school’s principal to make the principal appear to be a bigot.
Thirty-one-year-old Dazhon “DJ” Darien created an alleged audio recording of Pikesville High School principal Eric Eiswert. Darien is black, while Eiswert is white. In the recording, a voice that sounds like Eiswert makes disparaging remarks about black and Jewish students. The trouble is that the recording is fake, generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Police arrested Darien as he tried to board a flight to Houston from Baltimore on April 25th. Darien’s declared gun was improperly packaged, which drew scrutiny, and then airport security noticed that there was a warrant for his arrest.
Darien allegedly created the fake recording in January and enlisted the help of fellow school staff in disseminating it. Health sciences teacher Shae Ravenell distributed the recording to some by email. Predictably, furious controversy broke out.
In the fake recording, the AI Eiswert appears to denigrate black students and Jews. In one portion, the voice complains about “ungrateful Black kids who can’t test their way out of a paper bag.” The voice then threatened to join “the other side” — apparently the side that is antisemitic — if he got any more complaints from “Jews.”
Eiswert denies that he made those statements or that the voice in the recording belongs to him. However, he was temporarily removed from his post and faced a barrage of anger from parents and the community. Local media showed up with cameras at his home in an attempt to get an interview. Paperwork related to Darien’s arrest and the charges against him — stalking and theft among them — states the fake recording created a “wave of hate-filled messages” on social media directed at Eiswert and the school.
Investigators suspect that Darien created the recording to retaliate against Eiswert after the principal discovered that Darien had allegedly paid a friend almost $2,000 from school funds that were improperly diverted.
Despite his arrest at the airport in an attempt to leave Baltimore, Darien was released on a $5,000 bond pending an upcoming court appearance.
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