A former marching band color guard coach at Evanston Township High School has been charged with fondling a 16-year-old student at a northwest Indiana high school where he also worked.
The felony child seduction charge, filed last month in LaPorte County Circuit Court, claims that Lorenzo J. Medrano, 61, fondled the student repeatedly while she was a participant in the color guard program at the school in 2019.
Medrano’s arrest was first reported by WSBT Television in South Bend, which says Medrano was fired by the LaPorte school in March 2020.
In response to an inquiry from Evanston Now on Friday, ETHS spokesperson Takumi Iseda said Medrano “is not currently working with any ETHS students and he is not working at ETHS pending the results of the investigation.”
Payroll records on the ETHS website indicate that as a part-time employee Medrano earned $7,488 from the school in the 2017-18 school year, $10,633 in 2018-19 and $6,156 in 2019-20.
We asked Iseda for clarification about several issues — including when Medrano’s work at ETHS ended and whether any complaints had been made against him by ETHS students, parents or staff — and have not yet received a response.