HARPER, Texas – A former Harper Independent School District employee is accused of recording a 15-year-old girl changing inside his home, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by KSAT.
Pedro De Luna III was charged with invasive recording in connection with the alleged Nov. 7 recording, Gillespie County court records show.
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In a Tuesday statement to Facebook, the district identified De Luna as a former staff member and stated that the alleged recording took place off campus and outside of school hours.
The affidavit identified De Luna as having previously worked as an assistant band director within Harper ISD.
According to the affidavit, the girl and her mother were at De Luna’s home in Harper. The girl was changing clothes in a bathroom inside De Luna’s home when she found his phone on top of a pile of clothes on the floor. Sheriff’s deputies said in the affidavit that the phone was actively recording her.
After stopping the recording, the girl spoke to her mother outside the home about the recording. The affidavit states the mother confronted De Luna and went through his phone but did not find any recordings.
The mother reported the encounter the next morning, the affidavit states.
Gillespie County investigators met with De Luna at his home on Nov. 8. The affidavit states that De Luna said “several times that his phone had been messing up all day, and that he could not get his camera to work.”
De Luna also said before letting the girl enter the bathroom, he had moved the clothes to the corner of the room so he could hide his wife’s undergarments, according to the affidavit.
“De Luna insinuated that he had dropped his phone with the pile of clothes, which is how it was left in the restroom,” the affidavit states.
According to the affidavit, De Luna was “very forthcoming and almost too compliant” with investigators searching his phone.
Investigators found a one-second video from around 11 p.m. on Nov. 7, which showed someone’s clothed legs standing in the bathroom. De Luna told investigators he was the person in the video, the affidavit states.
No other videos were found on the phone. According to the affidavit, investigators found several items had been recently deleted. Those items were permanently deleted off De Luna’s phone, along with his online search history, deputies wrote.
The affidavit states De Luna’s search history started back up after that night with search inquiries on “how to retrieve deleted videos.”
When asked about the deleted files, De Luna did not deny deleting anything and told investigators he had deleted images of his wife, the affidavit states. Investigators seized De Luna’s phone for further inspection.
On Nov. 10, an investigator went back to De Luna’s home, but was informed “that he did not want to consent and that he had obtained an attorney,” the affidavit states.
Investigators obtained records from De Luna’s phone, which showed he had turned his phone on “Do Not Disturb” around the time of the alleged recording. The phone’s back camera was accessed immediately after, the affidavit states.
De Luna was booked on Monday, Dec. 1. He posted bond the following day.
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