A Watts middle school administrator, who had been removed from a previous school for allegedly brandishing a pistol at a parent, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old, police said.
Steven Thomas Rooney, the assistant principal at Markham Middle School, was taken into custody by Los Angeles police after the girl, a Markham student, told police she was forced into his car outside a fast-food restaurant, taken to his downtown residence and attacked.
Rooney is being held at the Parker Center jail downtown in lieu of $1-million bail and is expected to be arraigned Thursday on offenses that LAPD Capt. Fabian E. Lizarraga termed "very serious and egregious."
The 39-year-old administrator was hired in 2000 as a teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District's Peary Middle School in Gardena. He also taught at Foshay Learning Center and then became an assistant principal at Fremont High School, both in South Los Angeles, before joining the staff at Markham in September.
Rooney, who was on voluntary leave from Markham when the alleged incident occurred, was arrested in February 2007 on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon but never prosecuted, Lizarraga said.
The Times reported at the time that police investigated Rooney for allegedly attacking the stepfather of a student during an altercation. Neither school district officials nor police would provide the name of the alleged victim or the man's stepdaughter.
The stepfather filed a complaint, which led to the police inquiry and to Rooney's temporary transfer to "a non-school setting." When no charges were filed, district officials apparently cleared him to return to a campus.
Rooney, though new to Markham, was a visible, generally well-liked presence, students and active parents said Tuesday.
"Everybody liked him. I was like really close to him," said Karla Espinoza, a 14-year-old eighth-grader. When she heard about the arrest, "I just started crying."
She recalled one occasion that bothered her briefly. Rooney, she said, had once asked a friend of hers whether she would marry him if she were 18.
"I said, 'Why would you ask a question like that?' And he said, 'Never mind. Forget it.' "
Karla's mother, a parent volunteer, said she was in shock. "He would listen to the parents," said Eloisa Espinoza. "He would listen to everybody."
