Registered Sex Offender Released After Being Wrongly Identified As Person on School Grounds

By Bay City News Service

A registered sex offender who was believed to be the suspicious person spotted on a Sunnyvale school campus in January has been cleared in the case and is no longer in jail, a prosecutor said today.

Theodore Franklin Lorigo, 42, of San Jose, was released from the Santa Clara County Main Jail on Feb. 24 after prosecutors concluded that he did not visit the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School in Sunnyvale on Dec. 20, Deputy District Attorney Brian Welch said.

A prosecutor assigned to Lorigo's case came to that conclusion after reviewing surveillance video taken at the school and interviewing people who were in the school office that day, Welch said.

Additionally, witnesses could not pick Lorigo out of a lineup to identify him as the person seen on campus, Welch said.

Before the incident at the day school, Lorigo had been attending a synagogue in Los Gatos but the congregation learned he had a criminal record and denied him membership, Welch said. The synagogue also sent out emails to local community members advising them to be on the lookout for him.

Staff at the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School were among the email recipients, and when a suspicious person showed up on the campus on Dec. 20, they thought they recognized the person as Lorigo.

Lorigo was arrested on Jan. 23 and charged, but he denied being on campus and pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of being a registered sex offender on school grounds, Welch said.

Lorigo, who has been a registered sex offender since 2001, was also arrested on suspicion of possessing an altered identification card, a misdemeanor to which he eventually pleaded guilty, Welch said.

The person captured on video at the school was not Lorigo, and that person remains unidentified, Welch said.

"For all we know that person (in the video) was there for a legitimate purpose," Welch said.

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