‘Damn you’re young,’ CCSD employee allegedly told decoy before arrest

An assistant principal in the Clark County School District asked to pick up a 13-year-old girl for sex over a messaging app, according to a Las Vegas police arrest report released Thursday.

Tyler Yost, 29, an assistant principal at Derfelt Elementary School, was arrested Dec. 8 and charged with luring a child to engage in a sex act, according to court records.

FBI agents working with the Metropolitan Police Department posed as 13-year-old girls on various social media apps to lure 11 men during an operation targeting online predators, according to the arrest report.

“Damn you’re young! Lol,” Yost allegedly responded during an exchange of messages with a decoy on Kik. He then asked if she was in middle school before asking her explicit questions about sexual activity, according to the report.

Yost went to the La Quinta Inn & Suites at 6560 Surrey St. to pick up the girl, but was instead met by FBI agents who arrested him.

“Yost said he knew what he was doing was wrong,” police said in the report. “When Yost was asked if he planned on having sex with the (decoy) he said, ‘It crossed my mind.’”

Yost was hired in 2015 and is is working from home “per the negotiated agreement with their bargaining unit,” according to a message sent to parents by the elementary school.

The other suspects arrested in the sting were Christopher Damron, 46; Anthony Huth, 42; Alejandro Aranda, 35; Nicholas Lara, 27; Miguel Amezquita, 55; Jonathan Tavares, 45; Samuel Privado-Martinez, 40; Armando Grays, 45; Kun Yoo, 36; and Shawn Matthews, 39, police said.

An arrest report for Lara and Tavares, a Pahrump resident, said the men started messaging the decoy on Whisper on Dec. 7 before driving to Sunset Park where they were arrested. Arrest reports for Amezquita, Privado-Martinez, Grays and Yoo indicated they were soliciting the decoy for prostitution on an escort site on Dec. 8 before they were also arrested at Sunset Park.

Yoo is a registered sex offender after he was convicted in 2013 on two counts of possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to at least a year in jail but was given probation instead.

Yost was released after his Dec. 9 hearing and is scheduled to appear in court again on Jan. 11.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.