Ex-Santa Ana Teacher Held on Sex Counts

A former Santa Ana math teacher who fled the state just before being charged with molesting two male students was arrested Friday in Laredo, Tex., after being a fugitive for more than seven months, federal authorities said.

Enrique Solorzano Provence, 37, a former teacher at Willard Intermediate School, had been charged in an arrest warrant issued April 11 with two counts each of felony child molestation and misdemeanor child annoyance involving two boys, 11 and 12 years old.

FBI agents, in cooperation with Santa Ana and Laredo police, arrested Provence without incident about 6 p.m. as he was reporting to work at a store.

Authorities on Friday also found a 14-year-old boy whom Provence had taken with him when he fled the state, FBI Agent Wylie B. Cox said. Provence had said that the boy was his son, but police expressed doubt after checking birth records.

Investigators were trying to identify the boy’s relationship to Provence, if any, and whether he had been harmed, Cox said.

Details about the arrest were not immediately available. Cox declined to say how investigators found Provence.

Provence, who taught math in both Spanish and English to seventh-graders, was accused of the molestations after one of the victims in March confided to a school counselor, who notified the Orange County Child Abuse Registry.

The Santa Ana Unified School District placed Provence on administrative leave while police began an investigation. It is alleged that the molestations occurred during a five-month period on school grounds.