ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — A St. Johns County mother is worried about her son's school bus stop in the St. Augustine Shores neighborhood in St. Johns County.
"My little boy is five," Tina Gordon said. "He just started kindergarten this year."
Gordon pointed to a house in the neighborhood, saying "At the beginning of the year, the bus stop was at the corner next to the sheriff's deputy's house."
It was indeed on a corner, so she said the district moved the stop because of safety reasons.
"Back in November they moved the bus stop and placed it right in front of this house on Deltona," Gordon said, pointing to the stop's new location.
She then walked to the end of the driveway at that house. "Right here is where the kids have been instructed to stand and wait for the bus, which is directly in front of the sex offender's home," she said.
First Coast News checked, and she's right. A sexual offender is listed as living in that house. Gordon notified the St. Johns County school district as soon as she realized, and she was told the bus stop would be moved immediately.
Then, because of a leg injury, she had started to drive in her son to school.
She said the school district "told me in November [the bus stop] had been moved. I realized in December it had not been moved."
So Gordon told the school district again. She sent First Coast News emails to confirm the communication. Then school was out for the holidays. Tuesday, Jan. 7, she realized more students were back at the same bus stop.
She contacted First Coast News and we reached out to the St. Johns County school district about the case. A district representative said the transportation director will be in the neighborhood Wednesday to assess the situation.
As for the man at the center of this story, he spoke to First Coast News off-camera.
He confirmed he is a sexual offender. He said he didn't even know there was a school bus stop in front of his home. The case dates back to 2012, when he says he responded to an online ad for a meeting with a mother and a teenage girl who he says could've been 15 or 16 years old. He said it was part of an undercover sting in which law enforcement officers were posing as the mother and a teenager online. He said when he arrived at the meeting point, he was arrested. He was charged and convicted of "traveling to meet a minor to commit a sexual offense" as well as "use of a computer to solicit or lure a child to engage in sexual conduct."
He told First Coast News he is not a threat to children.
Gordon said she has not met him, and "I don’t' know exactly the details of his sex offense, but I do know his sex offense was against minors."
In an email dated in November, the school district's Director of Transportation told Gordon, "Our challenge is that registered sexual offenders are everywhere and under the law, the precautions taken with registered offenders is much different than registered predators."
Gordon said, "But you have a moral and ethical obligation to keep our children safe."
Again, the school district will be in the neighborhood Wednesday to access the situation.