12:09 AM CST on Thursday, December 22, 2005

By MELISSA MCGUIRE / KVUE News

A substitute teacher from Pflugerville has been arrested in an online child predator sting.

Texas AG

Dwayne Allen Lawhon.

Texas AG Dwayne Allen Lawhon. According to a release from the Texas Attorney General's office, Dwayne Allen Lawhon, 27, was arrested after he arrived in Bastrop to meet a 14-year-old girl he solicited online for sex.

Investigators say Lawhon thought he was meeting a young girl he contacted in an online chatroom, but it was actually an undercover Cyber Crimes Investigator.

Lawhon works for Pflugerville ISD as a substitute teacher. He has substitute taught 8 times at Pflugerville High School this year.

He is charged with online solicitation of a minor and is being held in the Bastrop County jail.

“The arrest of a substitute teacher for preying on young children is especially troubling,” Attorney General Greg Abbott said. “We must all be vigilant in making sure our children are protected from these predators. Our Cyber Crimes investigators are committed to tracking down these child predators and putting them behind bars.”

Officials with Pflugerville ISD say they are distressed by the arrest, and he will not be welcomed back to the district. The school district maintains that Lahon was subject to a background check prior to his teaching at PHS and the check came back clean .

"Hes had no issues up to this point. Of course, weve very distressed that we would have someone working with kids whose been accused of something like this," said Randy Reese of Pflugerville ISD.

Lawhon is the third teacher arrested by the Cyber Crimes Unit since 2003. Raymond Maurice Landry, Jr., 52, who was a professor at UT-Pan America in Edinburg, was arrested in October 2005. Todd Cline, 42, of Hutto, who was a special education teacher for Round Rock ISD, was arrested in June 2004.

Lahon was living with his parents in Pflugerville. His mother told KVUE that she did not see the arrest coming, and she is shocked.