Big Education "UPDATE": Just who is teaching our kids?

03/16/2014

All the background checks in the world can't protect students if the perpetrator has never been caught

Tanikka Queen (Source: LVMPD)

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) -

Clark County Detention Center records confirm Tanikka Queen was booked into the jail on charges including sex assault against a child under 16, statutory sexual seduction, sexual act with a pupil and first-degree kidnapping.

Clark County School District spokeswoman Melinda Malone confirmed Queen, 22, was a substitute teacher at Hyde Park Middle School and that the case is under investigation.

According to Queen's arrest report, on March 11, after having been taken into custody, she confessed to police to having had sex with a 15-year-old male student and told investigators, "I am in love with [name redacted]. I have never been in love before."

Metro police first responded to a report about an inappropriate relationship between Queen and an eighth-grade student on Feb. 26. The student's father had become suspicious when his son said he had been spending time with a girlfriend named Bella.

The alleged victim was interviewed, confessing to having spent time away from school with Queen, but denying the two had sex.

After police interviewed Queen, they extracted a series of text messages between her and the 15-year-old student from her iPhone:

"You should know how I feel by now," Queen wrote. "I'm serious, I'm putting my job on the line talking to you, so how can I not be serious?"

On Feb. 24, Queen texted, "People are getting hella suspicious. We gotta cool it down."

Police interviewed another student on March 5 who said Queen had confessed to her that she and the victim had sex, and had been dating since Valentine's Day.

Some of the text messages between Queen and the teen discuss meeting up at restaurants and Lorenzi Park, leading police to charge Queen with luring a child and kidnapping.

Queen is scheduled to make her first appearance in court on Friday at 7:30 a.m.

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