ERHS Student Charged with Statutory Rape

An East Ridge High School student caught having sex with his girlfriend, Tuesday, inside the school has been charged with Statutory Rape, officials said.

According to a press release by the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, earlier this morning, the School Resource Officer (SRO) at East Ridge High School was notified that a school faculty member had discovered a male and female student engaging in sexual activity at the school.

The SRO immediately conducted an investigation and found the male student involved in the incident was of legal age. The name of the male student is 19-year-old Tegra M. Mutubwa.

Due to the age difference between the two students, Mutubwa was charged with two counts of statutory rape. One count was due to today’s incident and a second count was from a previous incident involving the same student that was uncovered during the SRO’s investigation.

The female student is not of legal age and therefore their name is being withheld from public release.

Mutubwa is currently at the Hamilton County Jail awaiting to be booked.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.