A now-former Central Texas teacher arrested last year for illicit recordings of female students was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to 17 felonies including possession of child sexual abuse material.
Pedro DeLuna III was first arrested in December 2025 and charged with invasive visual recording, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years in jail.
DeLuna was an assistant band director and music teacher in Harper Independent School District, a three-school district with about 600 students and 90 staff members located just west of Fredericksburg.
He was allowed to resign in November 2025 when the allegations first arose.
A 15-year-old female student invited to DeLuna’s home along with her family members discovered a partially hidden cell phone in his bathroom that was recording video and told her mother, who notified authorities.
DeLuna was arrested December 1 and released on a $50,000 bond.
Gillespie County Sheriff Chris Ayala re-arrested DeLuna a week later on six additional charges involving illicit videos recorded on campus.
The sheriff said further investigation had revealed DeLuna possessed several video recordings of “young females from a Theater dressing/changing room located at Harper High School.”
In March 2026, a grand jury indicted DeLuna on 17 felony charges:
- 12 counts of invasive visual recording (state jail felony)
- 3 counts of possessing lewd visual material depicting a child (state jail felony)
- 1 count of tampering with evidence (third-degree felony)
- 1 count of possessing more than 50 images of child pornography (first-degree felony)
The Hawk’s Eye News confirmed with District Attorney Lucy Wilke of the 216th Judicial District covering Kerr and Gillespie counties that DeLuna pleaded guilty earlier this month to all 17 charges.
DeLuna received the maximum sentence on 16 counts: 2 years for each state jail felony count and 10 years for the third-degree felony.
The first-degree felony charge for child sexual abuse material carried a penalty of up to life in prison.
DeLuna was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that crime. All sentences will run concurrently.
Following DeLuna’s first arrest, Harper ISD’s then-superintendent Bonnie Stewart assured the community, “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that any inappropriate conduct occurred on school grounds, within the school, or involving any current students during school hours.”
In April, Harper ISD hired a new superintendent, Paul Goetzke, who took over at the beginning of this school year.
DeLuna does not hold a Texas teaching certificate and is not listed on the state’s Do Not Hire Registry.
In just the past few years, hundreds of Texas educators have been accused of sex crimes involving students and other children, and thousands have been reported to the Texas Education Agency.
The TEA’s Educator Misconduct Reporting Dashboard shows the agency is currently investigating more than 2,700 sexual misconduct complaints and opening an average of 250 new cases each month.
