RICHMOND, MO (KCTV) -
A teacher in Richmond, MO, is on paid leave as police and the school investigate whether he sent an inappropriate text to a student.
"Dude texts her said, ‘What are you wearing?' She said, ‘This is getting annoying,'" senior Dalton Daly said.
For about a month, police said a female 17-year-old senior at Richmond High School was getting inappropriate texts. The girl, so frustrated by the racy messages, took a screen shot of her phone and posted it on Facebook for her friends to see.
"He wrote back and said, ‘I wanted to let you know I would smash the heck out of you and your sexy a**,'" Daly said as he detailed what one of the text messages said.
According to police, the number the texts were coming from belonged to another student, but he's not the one who was sending the sexy messages. Police said the teacher was using a cell phone app called Google Voice to make it appear the messages were coming from another student's phone instead of his own.
"I've never seen a teacher try to use another name or another student's name to hide who they are," Richmond police Chief Chad Burnine said.
The student went to the assistant principal and he called child services, then police. Police said it's the teacher's first year at the school and they believe he's been busy.
"We believe there are other victims that he contacted and, at this point, we are not positive in the number of girls involved," Burnine said.
The school district pulled the teacher out of the classroom Thursday morning and, for now, he's been put on paid leave.
"The Richmond School District takes education and safety seriously and, when allegations came out, we contacted all the parties involved and are, at this moment, conducting an in-depth investigation as to what's going on," Superintendent of Schools Dr. Damon Kizzire said.
Police are calling this a case of sexual misconduct. They have been in touch with prosecutors and will turn over their findings when they wrap up their investigation.
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