POLK COUNTY, Fla. – Bartow High School’s head football coach has been arrested and charged with lewd behavior toward female students.
According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, 31-year-old Tyler Eden engaged in sexual talk with at least one student and unzipped a hoodie jacket of a 16-year-old female student who at the time was wearing only a bra underneath.
What You Need To Know
- According to the Polk Sheriff’s Office, Tyler Eden engaged in sexual talk with at least one student and unzipped a hoodie jacket of a female student
- Officials said Eden also pulled down the hoddie zipper of a 16-year-old girl when she was helping do work in the football locker room
- Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said the girl told Eden she was uncomfortable and later told her parents, who reported the incident
Eden is facing charges of a lewd offense against a student, lewd and lascivious touching of a minor and voyeurism.
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said an investigation into Eden, hired at Bartow High in April of 2023, began April 2 after parents reported inappropriate conversations Eden had with their daughter when the student met with him to perform extra-curricular work for community service hours.
Detectives said Eden asked a student if she wanted to earn community service hours by helping him with athletic chores.
While in the locker room assorting football helmets, Eden talked to the girl about a teacher who wanted to have sex with him in the locker room. The victim said she told the coach that she didn't want to talk about that.
The next day as the girl was working in the locker room, her hoodie jacket got caught on a box and the zipper broke open.
Grady said when she asked Eden for a T-shirt he unzipped her jacket all the way, at which point she told him that she was uncomfortable because only clothing she was wearing underneath the hoodie was a bra.
Eden repeatedly tried to fix the jacket, but eventually handed her a shirt. When she went to another area in the locker room to put on the shirt, Eden followed her, complimented her on her bra and said there were no cameras in that part of the locker room.
She told Eden she was uncomfortable, at which time Eden asked her not to report the incident, officials said.
“Not only is this highly inappropriate behavior by a teacher, imagine just how frightened this student was,” Judd said during a news conference this week. ”Here was the head football coach who was already discussing lewd behavior, unzipping her clothes, then following her into a locker room where he remarked there are no cameras, and complimenting her undergarments. This guy is a total creep, and now he's going to jail. We are not going to tolerate anyone - especially school teachers and coaches - preying on our children.”
