A former employee at a Tempe, Arizona high school is now facing nearly 100 additional criminal charges after investigators uncovered far more victims than initially known in a voyeurism case tied to a school dance room. What began as a seven-count arrest has grown into one of the more serious school-based privacy violations in recent Arizona memory.
Anthony Cruz, who previously worked at Corona Del Sol High School in the Tempe Union High School District, was first arrested in August on seven counts of voyeurism. Tempe police have since announced that a deeper investigation identified 38 victims in total, leading to a dramatically expanded set of charges.
Officer Jessica Ells explained the scope of the updated charges in a statement:
“We were essentially able to identify a total of 38 victims, and from those victims, we were able to add 98 more counts of voyeurism, which is a Class 5 felony.”
The recordings were made in the school’s dance room, which students had been using to change clothes while the girls’ locker room was undergoing renovation. According to Officer Ells, a security camera originally installed to monitor an exterior door had been mistakenly left active rather than turned off. Police were clear on one point: the students themselves had no way to protect themselves from being recorded.
As part of the same investigation, Cruz also faces two separate counts of bestiality stemming from the discovery of illegal animal sex videos — charges unrelated to the school-based voyeurism allegations but brought forward in connection with the broader case.