Jury deliberations continued this week in the trial of Robert Noel Anderson, a former Dehesa Elementary School teacher who is charged with fondling eight girls in his classroom from 2003-2006.
Anderson, 59, denied all the charges in his testimony on Aug. 27-28, and was the last defense witness in the trial before a jury of nine women and three men in El Cajon Superior Court.
Jury deliberations continued this week in the trial of Robert Noel Anderson, a former Dehesa Elementary School teacher who is charged with fondling eight girls in his classroom from 2003-2006.
Anderson, 59, denied all the charges in his testimony on Aug. 27-28, and was the last defense witness in the trial before a jury of nine women and three men in El Cajon Superior Court.
The eight girls are all now young women and they were among 21 prosecution witnesses. The women said they were touched inappropriately while they sat on his lap in the Dehesa Road classroom.
Judge Lantz Lewis instructed jurors Monday and they heard closing arguments before starting deliberations. The trial began Aug. 10 and many people have been attending it daily.
Two girls made allegations in 2003-2004, and Anderson went on administrative leave three times before resigning in 2006. Several girls did not come forward with allegations until after some years passed, and two reported being fondled after Anderson was arrested and charged on Sept. 11, 2014.
Anderson said several girls tried to sit on his lap at various times, but “I would push them away.” He told defense attorney Kerry Armstrong he “absolutely did not” stick his hand down the girls’ clothing as they had alleged. He remains in jail on $800,000 bail.
Spring Valley man sentenced for distributing methamphetamine
Michael Charles Markowski, 52, of Spring Valley, has been sentenced to 130 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.
Alfredo Morales, 45, of Lemon Grove, has received 110 months in federal prison on the same charge. Both men were the only East County residents who were charged among 24 people in a Chula Vista meth ring.
Markowski, who is serving his term in an Illinois prison, received a release date of March 2021. Morales was given a Sept., 2019 release date.
Morales’ attorney wrote that he was planning to get drug treatment in prison as “he has completely severed his ties with the drug world.”
The ringleader, Julie Peterson, 40, packaged the drugs in a Chula Vista house where she lived, but she grew up in Spring Valley. Peterson was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.
Woman to go under diagnostic study to determine further actions by court
Reynisha Ann Bransford, 24, is undergoing a 90-day diagnostic study in prison to determine if she could be placed on probation for robbing a woman of her purse and attempted robbery outside a La Mesa Vons store.
Bransford, of San Diego, has no prior record and was ordered to undergo the study by San Diego Superior Court Judge Timothy Walsh, who sentenced her boyfriend, Brian Quinn Coats, 22, to two years and eight months in prison.
Both pleaded guilty to robbery and attempted robbery in incidents at 11 p.m. in the Vons parking lot at 5630 Lake Murray Blvd. on March 7. They also admitted robbing three UCSD students in Fashion Valley that same night.
Bransford will be sentenced on Oct. 21. Coats has a prior record of vandalism at an East County smoke shop in which he was ordered to pay $6,574 in restitution.
