Teacher accused of sexual acts with student nabbed after fleeing US, Florida cops say
A high school teacher and coach accused of sexual acts with a minor student was arrested at the Orlando airport after returning from Mexico, deputies in Florida said.
Omar Ayala, 31, was taken into custody July 24 on a charge of sexual activity with a minor age 16 or 17 years old, according to a release from the Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office.
A warrant was issued for Ayala’s arrest April 19 after a student’s mother found “disturbing text messages and pictures” between her daughter and Ayala, who was the student’s cross-country running coach at the time of the messages, McClatchy News previously reported.
The Okeechobee High School teacher had previously been reported for inappropriate behavior in 2020, WPEC reported. He was then removed from his role as a coach for girls’ sports teams, according to the news outlet.
McClatchy News reached out to Okeechobee High School on July 25 and did not recieve an immediate response.
When an investigation began, Ayala had an inside man in the neighboring Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, deputies said.
Ayala’s “lifelong” friend, Arturo Dominguez, 30, was working as a sheriff’s deputy at the time and used the law enforcement database to run Ayala’s name and keep an eye out for a possible arrest warrant, Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez said in a June 1 news conference.
Dominguez told detectives he ran the name because he pulled Ayala over for a traffic stop, the sheriff said, but it was a “flat out lie.”
Lopez said Dominguez alerted Ayala when an arrest warrant had been issued and told him to flee, McClatchy News previously reported.
Dominguez was arrested May 31 on four felony charges and fired, the sheriff’s office said.
Deputies couldn’t find Ayala following the issue of the warrant.
“That’s pretty disgusting,” Lopez said at the time. “That’s pretty sick. We’re here to protect and serve, not to aid and abet anyone, especially a crime of this nature. We are here to protect our children.”
Officers with the U.S. Marshals Service began searching for Ayala after officials believed he was no longer in Okeechobee County, McClatchy News previously reported.
Okeechobee County Sheriff Noel Stephen told WPEC in June he believed Ayala had left the country, but he did not share a potential location.
“I think he’s in a foreign country,” Stephen told the outlet. “The longer he stays of course the more guilty he looks. And the more trouble he gets himself in because he knows that he’s purposely absconding and avoiding prosecution.”
Law enforcement now knows for at least part of Ayala’s months on the run, he was in Mexico, according to the sheriff’s office.
Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested Ayala upon his arrival at the Orlando International Airport, the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office did not release how long Ayala had been in Mexico or what prompted his return.
Okeechobee County and Osceola County are in Central Florida, spanning from Lake Okeechobee north to Orlando.
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