Parents, residents shocked at charges

Parents and residents are shocked after hearing the news of a North Henderson High School teacher being arrested and charged with soliciting a minor on the Internet.

School is out for summer and all seemed quiet until 57-year-old David Frank Pace was arrested Monday and charged with soliciting a child by using a computer.

The North Henderson High carpentry teacher, who resides at 68 Hog Rock Road, was arrested after he chatted online with police officers who posed as minors.

Eugene Beddingfield of Hendersonville said he went to school with Pace at Edneyville High School in the 1960s.

“He was a little younger than I am,” he said. “I knew of him, but didn’t know him well. It is shocking to hear the news of his arrest.” Beddingfield said it seems that these types of crimes are happening more often around the county.

“It needs to be stopped,” he said.

Michael Hunt, who has a 15-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter at North Henderson High, said that he was kind of surprised when he heard about Pace’s arrest.

“I am more surprised that it happened at North,” he said. “I didn’t think anything like that would happen there.”

The investigation was part of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Honeycutt said the Sheriff’s Office has been a member of the task force for two years. “We have made an estimated 40 arrests since joining with the task force,” he said.

Pace has been a teacher at North Henderson High since 1993. Henderson County Schools Superintendent Steven Page said that no action has been taken against Pace at the moment due to the summer holiday. Pace is still in jail under a $90,000 secured bond.

Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan said the investigation into this crime is ongoing. Anyone with information about the case has been asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office at 255-5555.

Other teacher arrests

Pace’s arrest isn’t the first of its type in the Henderson County Public Schools. In January 2002, Lawrence McKisson was convicted of molesting four male special education students between 1995 and 2001 when he worked as a volunteer student teacher, substitute teacher or reading assistant at Etowah, Bruce Drysdale, Dana and Edneyville elementary schools and at Apple Valley Middle School. He was sentenced to 62 years in prison for his crimes and was denied an appeal for a new trial.

In May 2002, the families of 17 children who said they were also molested by McKisson filed a negligence lawsuit against the Henderson County Public Schools Board of Education saying someone should have known about McKisson’s conduct and done more to protect the children under his supervision.

Then in 2007, another teacher was arrested and charged with sexual offenses against a student.

Charges still pending

East Henderson High School health science teacher Julie Miller Culbertson, 38, of 1200 Davis Mountain Road, was arrested by Henderson County Sheriff’s Office detectives in May 2007 at the central offices of the county school system.

The Sheriff’s Office charged Culbertson with a sexual offense involving a female student.

Culbertson resigned from her position as a health occupation teacher at East High, said David Jones, associate superintendent of Henderson County Public Schools.

According to school records, Culbertson was first employed by the school system on Oct. 8, 2004. She taught grades 10, 11 and 12, according to the school’s Web Site.

Culbertson’s charges have still not been resolved. She has a court date set for next week’s session of Superior Court in Henderson County.