A viral video captured the moment a former CHamoru language teacher from Southern High School was arrested for attempting to meet with what he thought was a 14-year-old boy.  35-year-old Gregorio Ecle was arrested in Orange County, California through the help of People v. Preds, an organization that poses as minors online to catch child predators. 

"Hey, who are you here to meet?" asked an officer in a video posted online, capturing the moment a suspected child predator with connections to Guam was arrested by Orange County sheriffs. "Hey, are you here to meet a 14-year-old boy today? Are you a teacher? Or a former teacher?" the officer asks, as Ecle shakes his head.

Ecle is a former language and culture teacher at Southern.  The arrest was coordinated by People v. Preds, a private group that pose as minors on the internet to catch alleged predators. 

KUAM News spoke with the man behind the camera, who we’re only identifying as being with the organization. He said, "My organization puts fake accounts on the Internet and we pose as children. So people reach out to us and we let them know that we’re underage pretty shortly in the conversation. Then the conversation continues or it doesn’t continue. In this situation, the conversation obviously continued, which allowed Gregorio to be arrested."

According to screenshots of the chat log posted online, Ecle was allegedly aware that the boy he was attempting to meet up with was only 14-years-old. 

Ecle allegedly planned to meet him at a parking lot of a supermarket in San Clemente, California, where he was apprehended by police. "The police were great in this scenario. They came and arrested him and he went to jail," said the group's representative.

On February 22, Ecle was arrested on suspicion of attempting to contact a minor with intent to commit offense. But he was released from custody less than a week later.

The People v. Preds person said, "I don’t think the Orange County DA filed charges unfortunately. This is something that is out of my control unfortunately but the evidence is definitely solid. The Orange County DA will definitely need some pressure from the community to know why they aren’t filing charges in a timely manner for someone that wanted to harm a child."

He says the mission behind People v. Preds is to spread awareness and keep kids safe from online predators.