Coach Gave False Fingerprints for Job, State Says
A former youth coach at Alemany High School and the YMCA dodged detection of his record as a sex offender by submitting someone else’s fingerprints and other false information for a background check, a state official said Friday.
Darryl McDonald, 36, used another person’s fingerprints for the check conducted for the North Valley YMCA in 1994, said Michael Van Winkle, a spokesman with the state Department of Justice.
McDonald apparently turned in a copy of the YMCA’s favorable record check when he applied as head basketball coach at Alemany in 1998, Van Winkle said. He said it appears that Alemany staffers accepted that report without conducting an independent background check.
McDonald was convicted in 1989 of oral copulation with a minor. Alemany and the YMCA, where McDonald administered youth sports programs, suspended McDonald this week pending an investigation.
McDonald’s lawyer, Jeffrey Brodey, declined to comment except to say that it should not be so easy to slip past the system.
“I don’t understand that,” Brodey said. “Every time I’ve been fingerprinted, it’s been in a police department, right in front of a policeman. I showed ID.”
Authorities do not know exactly how McDonald may have submitted the wrong fingerprints. But Van Winkle said McDonald also gave false or incomplete information on his date of birth, Social Security number and driver’s license number, hampering efforts to check his record using his name and personal information.
A spokesman for the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese, which operates Alemany, said the school is still investigating the incident.
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