Authorities were searching on Thursday for a 13-year-old boy and a female middle school teacher believed to be on the run after police began investigating an alleged intimate relationship b
OSKAR GARCIA / The Associated Press | Posted: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 7:00 pm
OMAHA — Authorities were searching on Thursday for a 13-year-old boy and a female middle school teacher believed to be on the run after police began investigating an alleged intimate relationship between the pair.
Kelsey Peterson, 25, a sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, was placed on administrative leave last week. A judge issued an arrest warrant Monday charging her with kidnapping, child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Authorities believed the two were traveling together in Peterson’s white Pontiac, and police nationwide were notified about them. Court documents said the boy was last seen Oct. 26.
“We’re still focused on locating both of them, whether they’re together or not,” Dawson County Attorney Elizabeth Waterman said Thursday morning. “I think right now anything is possible.”
The boy, 13-year-old Fernando Rodriguez, was an eighth-grade student at the school, but it was not clear if Peterson was his teacher two years ago. Peterson taught at the school and Rodriguez was a student, but district Superintendent Todd Chessmore said he wasn’t sure whether the boy was in her class. A school official referred questions to Chessmore.
The Associated Press does not generally identify potential victims of sexual assault, but Fernando’s name has been widely publicized as police search for him.
Court documents showed authorities had recovered several e-mails and letters in which the two professed their affection for one another. Some letters were discovered by Peterson’s father, Timothy Peterson, who turned them over to police, court documents said.
A message left for Timothy Peterson by The Associated Press on Thursday was not immediately returned.
In the letters, the boy called Peterson his “Baby Gurl” and said their relationship was “just not about the sex but that it was pretty good,” according to court documents.
Court documents say Peterson’s school-issued laptop contained letters to the student, including one from April saying she loved him, thought he loved her, was “100 percent faithful” to him and would always be faithful.
The boy’s aunt, Laura Rodriguez, told KRVN radio in Lexington that the pair’s relationship may have started as early as a year ago. She said the two were calling one another throughout the day and night.
Laura Rodriguez told the station the family believed Peterson gave the boy a cell phone without his family’s knowledge so she could reach him more easily.
Police said the boy contacted his family over the weekend and said the two were in Grand Island, about 85 miles east of Lexington, according to court documents.
According to court documents, Laura Rodriguez told police she talked to the boy by phone, and he asked her whether a visa or passport was required to travel to Mexico.
Lexington, a farming and meatpacking town of about 10,000, is about 220 miles west of Omaha in central Nebraska.
Police had said the pair apparently was spotted Friday night at a Denver convenience store, then again Sunday in Ogallala, in western Nebraska near the northeast tip of Colorado.
Lexington police on Thursday referred questions to Waterman, who would not say where police were focusing their search or comment on reports about where the pair were spotted.
Peterson’s MySpace Web site indicated she last logged in to the site two days before Chessmore confiscated her laptop.
“Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits,” Peterson said in her profile.
Sherill Neben, who shared a duplex with Peterson, said she rarely talked to Peterson and had not seen her or her young daughter for about a month.
“She was just never friendly,” said Neben, 69, who said police had taped off the doors and windows to the apartment as a crime scene.
John Fagot, whose brother David Fagot owns the property, said Peterson gave no warning before leaving.
Neben said Peterson’s daughter was either 7 or 8 years old.
Chessmore would not give any details about Peterson’s daughter except to say that she was not believed to be with her mother. Court documents did not indicate that the daughter was with the pair, and Waterman didn’t immediately return a phone message Thursday afternoon asking for details about the daughter.
Chessmore said the district was in the process of disciplining Peterson but would not give any details, citing state due process laws.
Peterson was licensed by the state in 2004 to teach kindergarten through sixth grade, the same year she started teaching at the middle school.
No disciplinary action had yet been taken against her by state education officials, and her license was valid through 2009.