Clovis East High Employee Arrested for Sex with Student

Students are shocked after an employee at Clovis East High School is arrested for having sex with a student.

24-year-old Fernando Garcia is charged with unlawful sex with a minor and lewd acts with a person under 16.

Garcia resigned from the district after his arrest. Clovis police took him into custody a few miles from the high school as he was driving to work.

Fernando Garcia was a campus security monitor and assistant coach to the freshman boys baseball team at Clovis East. Students say he was well-liked on campus.

Not long after Fernando Garcia’s arrest, students heard about it on campus.

"I was shocked because every morning when I come from the bus, he would be there and he would talk to students," said student Andrea Martinez.

Andrea is an 8th grader at Rayburn Intermediate which shares a campus with Clovis East High.
She says Garcia was liked and respected, because he helped students with their problems.

"And I thought he was good. But when I found out I was shocked, because I was like, so many students were close to him," Andrea said.

Authorities say it was a relationship with a student at the high school that crossed the line.

"I just know that the victim is under 16 years old. And a lot of things happened in a car, is what i was told," said Clovis Police spokeswoman Janet Stoll-Lee.

Clovis police were contacted after the student’s father called the district. Police arrested Garcia and he gave them consent to search his home in Fresno. Officers say they collected evidence in the case.

The district did a background check on Garcia before he was hired. And a spokeswoman says employees get regular training.

"We have conversations with our employees regularly about this topic, about the professional boundaries that have to be respected between students and employees, no matter what type of employee you are," said Kelly Avants with the Clovis Unified School District.

This is the second time this year that a Clovis Unified employee has been arrested for sex with a minor. In January, Matthew Pena and Dwayne Andrews, a teacher and substitute teacher, were arrested for having sex with the same student.

Andrea thinks students wont be the only ones talking about the latest arrest.

"The parents of the kids that were close to him, they might be asking questions to their child tonight," Andrea said.

It appears there is only one victim in this case. Police do not know of any others at this point.