Daughter of deputy prosecutor charged with making bomb, death threats

The daughter of a prominent Spokane County prosecutor was charged Monday with threatening to bomb and kill co-workers at a Spokane day care.

Taylor L. Cipolla, 29, pleaded not guilty Monday to the charges.

Cipolla is the daughter of Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Mark Cipolla, who prosecutes major crimes. The elder Cipolla declined to comment about the case.

Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell said that he has asked Lincoln County Prosecutor Jeff Barkdull to handle the case.

“Anytime there is a conflict, and this would qualify as one of those, I get ahold of another county prosecutor,” Haskell said. “Once you hand it off, you play no role whatsoever.”

According to court records, Colleen Condon, the owner of Lilac City Learning, at 1020 E. Cozza St., called police last week after receiving information that one of her employees, Taylor Cipolla, had made threats against other employees.

Officer Todd Brownlee responded and spoke to several witnesses. One of the employees said she overheard Cipolla say: “If I get fired I would come back and burn down the building; that’s how vindictive I am.” The employee then said she alerted Condon.

A different employee then told Officer Brownlee that Cipolla had made similar comments, including that if she was fired “I would come back and shoot people, starting with the new girls and burn down the building,” Brownlee wrote.

The second employee witness said she asked Cipolla how she would kill her. “The defendant said, ‘I would burn you and put a bomb next to you,’ ” Brownlee wrote.

The second employee then relayed threats she heard Cipolla make to kill four other employees. They included shooting a needle into a co-worker’s leg to cause an overdose; putting snake venom on a cat’s claws “so her cat would scratch her”; and killing another employee by trapping her hair in a car door and driving away, according to court records.

Both witnesses “will testify that they felt threatened by the defendant’s statements, by the defendant’s pattern of bullying them, that they were scared of her and feared that the defendant would carry out the threats if she were to be fired by Condon,” Brownlee wrote.

Brownlee then interviewed Taylor Cipolla after reading her the Miranda warnings. Cipolla “denied making statements about burning the daycare down and denied making statements about killing other employees,” Brownlee wrote.