2 School Employees Arrested

Two Fullerton School District employees have been arrested in separate incidents, one of which led to a teacher’s aide being charged with attempted murder for hire, police said Monday.

The aide--Paz Magana, 32, of Fullerton, who worked at Maple Elementary School--is suspected of trying to pay someone to kill her estranged husband’s girlfriend, said Fullerton Police Sgt. Joe Klein.

Magana was being held in Orange County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail. Klein said Fullerton police detained her last week at the school and authorities later charged her with attempted murder, solicitation to commit murder and furnishing drugs to a minor--her daughter.

In the second case, Rosibel Merino of Anaheim, a teacher at Richman Elementary, was arrested by federal drug agents on May 24 on narcotics charges, Klein said. Details of the case were unavailable.

Merino and Magana are on leave and could face dismissal, said Konnie Gault, spokeswoman for the north Orange County elementary school district.

The school board met in special session Monday to discuss the situation and will meet again Thursday, school board member Robert C. Fisler said.

Merino, who is not tenured, worked for the district on a temporary teaching credential, school officials said. Magana is a classified aide.

“This is definitely not a personnel matter, it is a police matter,” said trustee Kim Ann Guth.

Klein said investigators are seeking Antonio Pargas, a man in his 20s with no known address, as the alleged co-conspirator in the murder-for-hire case. Magana recently came into a large sum of money that she is believed to have used to pay Pargas to kill the husband’s girlfriend. The husband’s name was withheld by police to protect his safety. Police also withheld the girlfriend’s name. The husband and wife have been estranged since 1997, police said.

Magana’s husband went to the police Wednesday after he discovered a packet of cocaine in his 12-year-old daughter’s backpack, police said. The girl, who lives with her mother, told her father that she had been instructed by Magana to place it in her father’s house to incriminate him and his girlfriend, police said.

The husband also told police that he had been contacted by Pargas, who allegedly offered him the chance to buy him off, police said.

The daughter and Magana’s three other children by her estranged husband have all been placed in county custody at Orangewood Children’s Home.

The Fullerton district serves 12,000 students in 19 schools in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Neither the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which arrested Merino, nor the U.S. attorney’s office returned calls seeking details of her arrest.