ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. (KDVR) — A substitute teacher who’s worked at several Littleton elementary schools has been arrested and accused of child pornography.
Jose Tamayo, 25, was booked Friday on one count of felony sexual exploitation of a child, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.
He has worked in Englewood and Littleton public schools, but “investigators have no reason to believe any victims were students of either district,” the Sheriff’s Office said.
Investigators were alerted through a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that he “had uploaded suspected child pornography through the social media platform Snapchat using the screen name freakygurls420,” the Sheriff’s Office said.
Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Brian Ewert said Tamayo was substitute-teaching third graders when he was arrested.
“The arrest happened quietly and discreetly outside of the building, out of the sight of children. No information was shared with students,” Ewert said in a letter to the district community.
Booking records show Tamayo was being held in the Arapahoe County jail on Friday afternoon and was set for a court hearing on Saturday.
Tamayo passed a background check when he began substitute teaching with the district at the beginning of the 2021 school year, the superintendent said. He has worked at the elementary schools Centennial, East, Field, Lenski, Runyon, Sandburg, Twain and Wilder. This school year, he worked as a substitute teacher at Runyon and Wilder, according to the letter.
Before that, he worked as a substitute teacher at Englewood Public Schools and as a paraprofessional during the 2020 -2021 school year, the Sheriff’s Office said.
“Safe and ethical behavior of our employees are strong values of the LPS Board of Education, and these values extend to the behavior of substitutes. Any time we have a concern about inappropriate employee conduct, either on or off campus, we will take appropriate action,” Ewert said.
Tamayo has been removed from the substitutes list, according to the superintendent.
“We take student safety extremely seriously. We immediately took action after we were notified of these serious allegations by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office,” the superintendent said.
Anyone with information on the case was urged to call the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office tip line at 720-874-8477.