[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
A female teacher in Nebraska was arrested on Saturday after she was allegedly caught undressed in a car along with a teenage student.
At 2:49 a.m. local time on Saturday in the city of Omaha, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office deputies were dispatched to investigate a report of a suspicious vehicle parked along a dead end street. Once there, deputies discovered that two people were in the backseat of the car, which was described as a gray 2015 Honda Pilot.
As the sheriff’s deputies arrived and pulled up behind the car, one of the people inside the car scurried into the driver’s seat and frantically started to drive away. They didn’t make it far, though. The hectic and high-speed chase only lasted two blocks before the car crashed into the front yard of a home. Deputies followed in pursuit and pulled up at the crash site.
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There, per a press release from the sheriff’s office, a teenage male rushed out of the crashed car “wearing no clothes” and fled from the scene on foot. The other person in the car was an adult woman who, when cops walked up to the vehicle, was found naked and hurriedly trying to get dressed in the back seat.
Deputies confirmed her identity as 45-year-old Erin Ward. They also discovered an Omaha Public Schools employee ID badge with her name on it inside the car. When questioned about the badge, Ward admitted that she was a substitute teacher at Burke High School in Omaha as well as two other local schools. In their release, the sheriff’s office stated:
“Ward also admitted to having sexual intercourse with the driver who she indicated was a 17-year-old male student at Burke High School.”
Oof…
Per cops, the car belongs to Ward and her husband — who the New York Post reports is a high-level director at US Strategic Command within the U.S. Department of Defense named Doug Ward. That must have been quite the conversation after the arrest — the circumstances of the whole thing, plus the family car crashing into the front yard of a home after a freakin’ police chase. Yikes.
About an hour later, deputies found the teenager hiding in a nearby neighborhood wearing only boxer shorts, a t-shirt, and socks. He was identified as a 17-year-old high school student, but his name has not been released because of his age. He was given “minor medical attention” before being transferred for an interview with investigators.
As for Ward, she was arrested and charged with one count of felony sexual abuse by a school employee. She was taken to the Douglas County Department of Corrections and booked. (FYI, the age of consent is only 16 in Nebraska, and so Ward was not charged with statutory rape or anything similar despite the teen’s age.)
If you have sincere cause to suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence and would like to learn more about resources, consider checking out https://www.rainn.org/resources.
[Image via Douglas County Sheriff’s Office]