Man sought for lewd act outside high school

[Cachondo]

I don't know how much it pays to be the one.



SIERRA VISTA — A female Buena High School student reported to police Friday that a man indecently exposed himself to her in the parking lot.

The 17-year-old student told the high school’s resource officer, Officer Armin Lewis, that the perpetrator is a white man in his 30s, heavy set, who was in a gold 2003 Ford Focus in the student parking lot at the school, 5225 E. Buena School Blvd.

Sierra Vista police have the Ford’s license plate number and are working to identify the suspect. Sgt. Daryl Copp, a police spokesman, said it appears the man who was in the car may not be the registered owner of the car.

Last Halloween, a man fitting the same physical description reportedly performed lewd acts from a old beat-up car, witnessed by two female Tombstone High School students in the parking lot after school.

Tombstone Marshal M. Jay Smith on Tuesday said that case remains open, largely because Tombstone investigators had no license-plate number.

The following day, Nov. 1, all Tombstone High students were sent home with a note warning parents of the incident and describing the suspect as an overweight Caucasian man with either bald or very short hair, wearing medical scrubs, and driving an older model tan or light-brown four-door sedan.

Sierra Vista school district spokeswoman Donna Avina said the family of Friday morning’s victim was notified, and the police report was filed.

Because something like that has never happened before at Buena High School, the incident, while it was “terrible,” was not determined to be an immediate danger to students’ lives, Avina said.

So, the automated emergency call to all parents was not made, Avina said.

An automated call to all Buena parents was made, though, Tuesday, after a morning altercation in a Buena hallway left one student injured with a knife wound. Both students involved have been criminally charged.

The mother of the teen who reported Friday’s incident believes notification should have happened quickly.

“In my opinion, children and students are in harm’s way when they don’t publicize the incident,” she said in a Tuesday evening phone interview.

She asked not to be identified as to protect her daughter’s privacy.

The mother, who says she’s started MySpace and e-mail campaigns and passed out 200 fliers on the incident over the weekend, said she believes her daughter could have helped catch the man if she had been given information about the earlier incident.

She said she has three goals: to catch the man, to change the notification process at schools and to change how records in the state are kept regarding vehicles. She has been told that the color of a car is not a required piece of information in a state automobile database.

The mother said she is meeting with school officials later this week to see how notification of parents can improve.

Avina said Buena High School administrators met on Tuesday afternoon to determine standard operating procedures and to determine thresholds regarding parental notification for incidents, such as the one Friday morning.

“For if that happens again, which we hope it never does,” she said.