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Pennsylvania Teacher Suspended Over Alleged Relationship With Former Student Found Shot Dead
Rachael DelTondo was shot multiple times at close range in her mother's driveway in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. A year ago, she was suspended from her teaching job after confidential information about her from police leaked to the public.
A Pennsylvania teacher, recently suspended for an alleged relationship with one of her former students, was shot to death in her mother’s driveway on Mother’s Day.
Rachael DelTondo, 32, was shot multiple times and she died on the scene. She was returning from a trip to buy ice cream with a friend, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh reported. She was “brutally shot at close range multiple times,” in the Aliquippa driveway, Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier told Newsweek.
Police haven’t released the name or description of the suspect, who is still at large. Lozier was mum about who the suspect could be but he did reveal that he believes DelTondo knew her killer. He also said he thinks the murder was a crime of passion and that residents do not have to worry for their own safety.
DelTondo was suspended last year from her teaching job at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, a K-12 school, after confidential information leaked to the public from the Aliquippa Police Department about an alleged affair with a student, according to KDKA-TV. Two years ago, DelTondo was found in a parked car with an underage student, according to KDKA-TV. She was questioned at the time but never charged with a crime. A year later, details of that questioning were leaked, which resulted in her suspension.
The leak also led to a state police investigation of the Aliquippa Police.
It’s unclear if the alleged affair and the suspension from her job have anything to do with her murder. DelTondo was engaged before the controversy, but her wedding plans fell apart. She was actually interviewed by KDKA-TV for a story on wedding dress deposits last February. Four months after she put a $4,000 deposit down on a wedding dress, the wedding was called off.
The above photograph of DelTondo, taken from her Facebook page, is from happier times. The photo is dated 2015, before the alleged incident with the student and well before the leaking of information.
Lozier believes that DelTondo was wrongly suspended and targeted.
“It’s shameful that this woman was painted with a police report that had been written that did not result in criminal charges,” Lozier told KDKA. “It was a personal vendetta against her at the time.”
Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker is urging Aliquippa residents to contact police if they have information about DelTondo’s death.
However, he has refused requests by Pennsylvania State Police to talk to them about the Aliquippa Police Department’s leak of records about DelTondo, sources told the Beaver Countian in Beaver, Pennsylvania.
