CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A Chesapeake middle school teacher is on administrative leave following his arrest on child pornography charges.
Authorities took 25-year-old Jordan Palomares into custody Tuesday. He's charged with four felony charges of possessing child pornography.
According to the complaint, Palomares shared sexually explicit images of young victims in the social media app Snapchat. Some of the images included children that authorities say were as young as four years old.
The criminal complaint says Palomares uploaded the images using the user name “mr_presidentp” and shared photos of young girls between the ages of 4 and 10 three different times with other users in a chat in June.
There were also 19 other Cybertips reported by Reddit in 2022. All of the offenses reported by Reddit happened on July 7 and July 17, 2022. All of the Cybertips were linked to Palomares, according to court documents.
Court records say Snapchat reported the images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office, which is in charge of the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children's Task Force.
Chesapeake Public Schools confirmed to 13News Now that Palomares worked as a teacher at Deep Creek Middle School. Court documents reveal that he worked there for one year and three months.
According to the criminal complaint, Palomares confessed to police that he had been looking at child pornography since he was 12 years old.
One parent, who declined to give her name, said Palomares was her daughter's teacher.
“Today, we did receive an email from the principal. My daughter told me today, because her class is majority females that, he said, that hers is his favorite class," said this parent.
The school principal told families, “Based on the information we have at this time, there is no indication that these allegations involved any students or took place on school grounds.”
However, court records say they found images of a student taken on Sept. 23 that appeared to be without her knowledge on Palomares' laptop.
13News Now reached out to the school division about that reported incident and are waiting to hear back.
13News Now also went to Palomares's home to get his side of the story, but no one answered the door.
The division has placed the teacher on administrative leave, but parents still have questions.
“Chesapeake mothers will gather up and we want answers," said the parent that spoke with 13News Now. "We want to know, how did you let this happen? How did you let this happen, Chesapeake?”
Palomares was arraigned in court on Oct. 1st. He faces a Class 5 felony charge and a Class 6 felony charge.