Kenneth Shindle, a 28-year-old man and Hillsborough High School teacher, and a 17-year-old female student were found to have shared more than 200 “after hours phone calls” in a span of five months, according to complaint filed in Middlesex County Superior Court.
Shindle faces two second degree counts of endangering the welfare of a child after local and county detectives began investigating a “possible dispute” between the teacher and student that allegedly took place on the front lawn of his Plainsboro home.
Following their investigation, Detectives Timothy McMahon of the Plainsboro Police Department and Mark Morris of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office determined that the teacher and his student had been engaged in the alleged inappropriate conduct from Jan. 1 until May 7.
According to an affidavit of probable clause filed by the authorities, the English teacher and unnamed juvenile would also spend time together at Shindle’s home without supervision.
During one of those visits on May 6, the complaint claims that both Shindle and the student admitted to “kissing on [his] couch.”
The new information comes more than a week after the teacher was charged with two second degree counts of endangering the welfare of a child; one count for engaging in sexual conduct that would “impair or debauch the morals of the child” and one count for causing harm to the child that made her “an abused or neglected child.”
Though officials at the Hillsborough Township Public School District declined to comment on Shindle’s arrest or his current employment status at the high school, they have gone on record to say that the district was “working in full cooperation with law enforcement.”
Shindle is currently suspended from Hillsborough High School, where he had worked for five years and had earned tenure status.
Authorities said Shindle is currently out of the Middlesex County Jail after the Middlesex Prosecutor’s Office did not file to detain him following a court hearing last week. The courts did, however, order him to be monitored on a weekly basis.
