School worker exchanged about 1K texts with girl to lure her into relationship, police say

Joshua Herrera, 28, while employed by the school district from 2021 to 2023, met and developed an association with the minor female between April and May of last year, according to the CCSD police department.

Herrera, working as an office specialist at an unnamed school, received oral sex once and kissed her on two different occasions before transferring later in 2023 to Western High School where he served as a student success advocate, the arrest report said.

Then, from Feb. 26 to March 6, Herrera exchanged about 1,000 text messages with the student, school police stated.

“The purpose of those messages was to lure (the student) away from her parent and or school to engage in a romantic or sexual relationship,” the report said.

During an investigation, school police learned from a counselor at Western High that a teacher had come forward and told her about the alleged inappropriate relationship between Herrera and the girl.

During a conversation by school police and the girl on March 6, “Herrera called and texted (her) phone dozens of times,” according to the arrest report.

The girl, who showed police the messages and call logs on the phone, said that Herrera had been to her house to ask her mother if he could date the girl but her mother “told Herrera to get out and never speak to (the girl) again,” the report said.

The flurry of texts from Herrera to the girl, mainly his pleas for her to spend time with him, ended on March 6, it said.

On March 7, a school police sergeant contacted a detective about a possible inappropriate relationship involving a student and school staff member, district police said.

The sergeant provided the detective with the girl’s iPhone, after obtaining a signed consent form to search the device, and the detective extracted 95.5 gigabytes of data from it, copied it and booked it as evidence, based on the report.

On Monday, school district detectives executed a search warrant at an unnamed residence, arrested Herrera and booked him into the Clark County Detention Center on two counts of a school employee engaged in sexual conduct with a pupil and one count of contacting a minor for sex, the school district said in a news release.

Herrera started as a district employee in 2019, when he worked as a campus security monitor until 2021, then as office specialist until 2023 and student success advocate up until this month.

The district stated in its news release that Herrera would be “assigned to home upon release per the negotiated agreement with the employee’s bargaining unit and will not be allowed on campus.”

Herrera was bailed out of jail soon after his Monday arrest, and a status check on his case in Justice Court is set for April 25.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on X.