3 students cited over bathroom sex video at Las Vegas school

School police have cited three Sunrise Mountain High School students after a video of two students having sex in a bathroom ended up online last week.

The subjects in the video, a 17-year-old and 14-year-old student, entered a boys restroom Wednesday or Thursday to have sex, according to Clark County school police acting Capt. Roberto Morales.

A third student who heard the sexual activity recorded eight to nine seconds of it on his phone, later sharing it through the iPhone AirDrop feature to other students in the school, Morales said.

“Instantly a bunch of kids had it,” Morales said, though he was not sure how many. The northeast Las Vegas Valley school has about 2,500 students.

The video ended up on social media, but Morales was not sure who posted it or which websites it landed on.

The two students in the video were cited for lewd and lascivious conduct, a gross misdemeanor, according to Morales.

The third was cited for sexting and was deemed as a child in need of supervision under Nevada law.

Morales said students who had it sent to their phones automatically are not liable for the images, but they may be if they redistributed them.

“The recommendation is anybody that has that, they should delete it from their phone immediately,” he said.

A lawyer with the Las Vegas Defense Group, Michael Becker, believes the child in need of supervision law should not apply to the student who filmed the act.

The child in need of supervision statute can apply to possession of a sexual image, but another statute considers the distribution of a sexual image by a minor to be a delinquent act with punishment similar to that of an adult misdemeanor, Becker said. He said he believes the distribution clause was more applicable.

“I think they may have made a charging mistake,” Becker said.

Both police and the district attorney’s office have leeway in deciding how to apply the law, Becker said. However, he said, it wouldn’t surprise him if the district attorney’s office pursued a different punishment.

Becker added that the student’s age, which wasn’t known Monday night, likely would factor into how the district attorney’s office decides to move forward.

“You don’t want to traumatize these young kids, but you want them to understand what is acceptable and what is not acceptable,” he said.

Contact Amelia Pak-Harvey at apak-harvey@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4630. Follow @AmeliaPakHarvey on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Mike Shoro contributed to this report.