Community Shocked Over Teacher’s Arrest

A school district official said Wednesday he was shocked by the arrest of a Santa Ana elementary school teacher on suspicion of inappropriately touching three students.

“We are stunned by this incident,” said John Bennett, deputy superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District. The suspect, Jerome Thompson Wilhoit, 36, has been “highly thought of by the community and by his peers,” Bennett said. “He was considered a leader at the school.”

Wilhoit was a first-year teacher at Wallace R. Davis Elementary, which opened last summer, and is vice president of the PTA. He even helped to write the school song, Bennett said.

He was suspended without pay Friday when a male student in his combination second- and third-grade class at Davis told the principal he had seen Wilhoit inappropriately touching another student. A police investigation followed. Wilhoit was arrested Tuesday, and he is scheduled to be arraigned this morning on charges of molesting two 7-year-old girls and a 9-year-old girl.

One of the incidents allegedly took place in February when Wilhoit was a substitute teacher for a day at Harvey Elementary in Santa Ana, police said.

“We are very careful when hiring teachers. If anything in his background had looked the least bit suspicious, we never would have hired him,” Bennett said, noting that all applicants are fingerprinted and undergo extensive background checks. “If something in someone’s past doesn’t check out, we won’t even touch them.”

Counselors and psychologists were available to students, Bennett said, but the children haven’t been told in detail why Wilhoit left. In addition, school officials sent letters home with students before the arrest informing parents that an unnamed teacher had been placed on leave for undisclosed reasons.

Several parents at Davis Elementary said Wednesday that Wilhoit was known as an attentive teacher and a deeply religious man. Assistant Principal Maria Gutierrez-Garcia said he plays several musical instruments and was involved in the Peer Assistance Leadership program, an anti-drug club for students.

Parent Marycruz Montalvo, 25, said she found the allegations hard to believe.

“I wondered what was going on when I received a letter from the school. When I heard more about it this morning, I felt sick to my stomach,” said Montalvo, whose daughter attends kindergarten at Davis.

The allegations follow an incident May 4 in Newport Beach where an elementary school student was accosted by a man in a restroom, and the arrest Friday of a former Garden Grove high school assistant principal on suspicion of impregnating a 17-year-old student.

Times staff writer Roberto J. Manzano contributed to this report.