A former science teacher who was charged with raping a student in 2022 and went on to violate her bond conditions by seeing the child numerous times post-arrest now faces even more legal trouble, the local sheriff’s office said.
Elizabeth Suzanne Bailey, a 37-year-old from Statesville, North Carolina, allegedly admitted that she had been drinking at the time an unidentified juvenile driver crashed a vehicle the defendant was traveling in on Mocksville Highway over the weekend. In a Monday afternoon update, the sheriff’s office said it learned Bailey was in the front passenger’s seat of a crashed vehicle that was driven by one minor and transporting a second minor.
Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell said that Bailey was arrested Saturday after investigators learned that she was not legally allowed to be in contact with one of the minors.
“On the afternoon of Saturday, May 13, 2023, the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office Deputies responded to the 700 block of Mocksville Highway after receiving information about a traffic accident. The deputies received information about three individuals in the car; two had run from the scene. The deputies were requested to help search for the two suspects who fled,” authorities said. “Before the deputies arrived, the two juveniles who had fled were located. Deputies assisted in transporting one of the juveniles back to the accident location. The deputies cleared the scene, and the North Carolina Highway Patrol investigated the vehicle wreck.”
The sheriff’s office said that the minor driver of the vehicle was taken into custody pursuant to an “outstanding Juvenile Secure Custody Order,” a “legal mechanism” under North Carolina law “by which certain delinquent and undisciplined juveniles may be held under lock and key pending hearing and disposition of their cases.”
Authorities said that the juvenile was then hauled from his home to the Alexander County Detention Center. Bailey was arrested at her Bluff Court residence primarily because “she was under court order to stay away from one of the juveniles in the vehicle” and violated her pretrial release conditions for a second time, but the former educator was also cited for contributing to the delinquency of a minor and allowing an unlicensed driver to drive, the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office said additional charges “may follow.”
Despite all of the foregoing, authorities said, Iredell District Court Judge Christine Underwood changed a magistrate judge’s bond decision, enabling the defendant’s release from custody without posting additional bond.
“After our original news release was sent out, our agency was made aware that District Court Judge Christine Underwood amended the bond to strike the 750,000.00 dollars bond issued by the magistrate,” the sheriff’s office said in an update to their update. “Bailey is to remain under a posted bond from October 2022. She is being released from custody on this new charge without posting any additional bond for violating a Pre-trial Release Order for a second time.”
When Law&Crime reported on the defendant in September 2022, Bailey had been hit with additional charges for violating her bond conditions by allegedly having the student rape victim over at her home at least nine times since her initial August 2022 charges for statutory rape of a person 15 years old or younger, indecent liberties with a minor, and sexual activity with a student, all felonies.
The conditions of Bailey’s bond on those charges barred her from contacting the child behind the wheel in the latest incident. She was also placed on an ankle monitor. As a result of the first series of alleged bond violations, Bailey was accused of more than two dozen offenses, including contributing to the delinquency of a minor, intimidating or interfering with a state witness, and violating her pretrial release conditions.
Bailey previously worked for the Iredell-Statesville School District at Northview Academy, formerly known as Pressly School, an “alternative/non-traditional school serving students grades K-12.”
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