Susie Ortiz Concerned Grandmother On the last day of school at St. Augustine, the principal dropped a bombshell.
Grandmother Susie Ortiz said, "You always think and hear that it's something that happens somewhere else."
Students were sent home with a three page long letter describing what first started as strange occurrences but morphed into a serious crime. The principal writes that children were never in danger.
It all happened over the course of three years. Staff would occasionally discover stolen items and other items placed oddly around campus. Adult pornography would also pop up on school computers. Whoever was intruding, they believed, was doing it between 1am and 4am, but curiously, the school's surveillance cameras never caught the crook.
Then a month ago, when a thumb drive went missing, the principal called police. After confiscating three hard drives, the letter reads, investigators eventually found child pornography encrypted. So catching the guy became more urgent.
Police set up surveillance. He was arrested early Thursday morning, the principal says, viewing pornography at the school. Susie Ortiz is a grandmother of six St. Augustine students.
She said, "We're not immune to anything even though this is a Christian school, a Catholic church."
According to the letter no students had access to the child pornography and police assured the principal no students were on the child pornography files.
The school isn't sure how the suspect got a set of keys. He did tell police he disabled the school's surveillance system and that's why they never caught him on camera.
The archdiocese told Eyewitness News they were aware of the investigation but can't tell us the suspect's name or his relationship, if any, to the school. We got this information after normal business hours so Houston police media relations couldn't help us either.
