The Riverside Unified School District, under pressure from the community to release information on an employee suspected of committing sex crimes against children, has revealed the job title of the man that it had sought to keep secret for an unspecified amount of time.
Mario Moralez Guadalupe, 31, is a groundskeeper assigned to a district facility, Elizabeth Pinney-Muglia, a district spokeswoman, wrote in a news release emailed to the media about 30 minutes after the close of district business hours on Friday, Feb. 14.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department had said in a document filed in Superior Court that Guadalupe was a janitor.
Pinney-Muglia on Wednesday declined to provide Guadalupe’s title, job description or the locations where he works. But after the Southern California News Group’s story Thursday on Guadalupe’s arrest — that it learned about from an anonymous tip — parents and others began to seek answers from the district.
“Although we had coordinated the release of information to the community to be timed with the conclusion of the investigation, a media outlet report has generated questions and it is important that we reassure our families now rather than later,” Pinney-Muglia said in the release, which was written about a month after Guadalupe’s Jan. 15 arrest and did not identify him by name.
“The staff member was assigned to a district facility, not to a school site. At this time, no information has been shared with us to indicate that the offenses leading to the arrest were related to their role as a district employee,” she wrote.
Guadalupe was placed on administrative leave.
He has been charged with 19 felonies, including lewd acts on a minor younger than 14 years old, court records show. A sheriff’s deputy investigating the case said in a sworn statement written to a judge to increase Guadalupe’s bail that there could be as many as 21 victims.
Guadalupe pleaded not guilty to all charges on Jan. 17 at Southwest Justice Center in French Valley. He is being held at Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning in lieu of $1.22 million bail.
No one at his Riverside home has returned a reporter’s message seeking comment.
Guadalupe’s next hearing is scheduled for March 13.
