Parents planted drugs on PTA president, police say [update]

The school volunteer and PTA president allegedly targeted by parents who planted drugs in her car said she thought she was the victim of a joke when police came to question her.

“I thought I was on a joke show, like someone was playing a joke on me,” Kelli Peters told KTLA.

Authorities say that an Irvine couple planted drugs in the volunteer’s car because they were displeased with her supervision of their son, a student at Plaza Vista Elementary School in Irvine.

“They tried to make me look like the worst person you could be when you’re involved with a school,” Peters told KTLA. “I just don’t understand it.”

The parents arrested in the case — Kent and Jill Easter, both 38 and both attorneys — had previously sued Peters twice in 2010, though both cases were later dismissed, according to Orange County court records.

When announcing the Easters had been arrested on felony charges Tuesday, the Orange County district attorney’s office said the couple devised a plan to get the volunteer arrested.

Prosecutors say Kent Easter drove to the volunteer’s home shortly after midnight on Feb. 16, 2011, and put a bag of prescription pain medication and marijuana, along with a used marijuana pipe, in plain sight in the woman’s unlocked car.

He then allegedly called police from a public phone in Newport Beach and falsely reported seeing the volunteer — whom he identified by name — driving erratically to the school and hiding drugs behind the driver’s seat of her car.

Irvine police went to the school the night and found the drugs, but after speaking with the volunteer and searching her home, found “no evidence to support drug use or possession,” the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

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This story was reported by Times Staff Writer Kate Mather.