Police investigating the murder of a Pennsylvania teacher who was gunned down in her driveway have applied for a search warrant for a teenage boy she had a friendship with, according to court documents viewed by DailyMail.com.
Rachael Deltondo, 33, was shot dead outside her mother’s house on Mother’s Day shortly before 11pm – six months after being suspended from her job when a February 2016 police report was leaked revealing she had been found in a ‘steamed-up’ parked car with a 17-year-old boy.
Police are attempting to establish suspects in the case which investigators have described as a ‘crime of passion’. Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier said evidence appeared to show the perpetrator was known to the victim.
DelTondo’s death comes just six months after the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School teacher was suspended from her job over a leaked police report
Rachael DelTondo, 32, (pictured) was standing on her mother’s Buchanan Street driveway, in Aliquippa, Beaver County, on Sunday when she was killed in a hail of gunfire
No suspects have been identified by police and no arrests have been made. The search warrant was applied for by Aliquippa Detective Captain Ryan Pudik and by signed by Magisterial District Judge Janet Swithart.
Court documents viewed by DailyMail.com and the Beaver Countian show that the subject of the search warrant is Sheldon Jeter Jr – the boy she was found with in 2016, who is now 20.
The warrant, filed on May 14 by the City of Aliquippa Bureau of Police, is seeking access to Jeter’s iPhone, call records and geolocation data.
According to the affidavit, Deltondo had been picked up by female friend, daughter of Aliquippa police Sgt. Kenneth Watkins, around 8pm om Sunday night.
Sgt Watkins has been placed on paid administrative leave by Chief of Police Donald Couch because his daughter, who is a minor and is not being named by DailyMail.com, is involved as witness in the case, according to the Countian.
According to the search warrant’s affidavit, Deltondo and her friend went to Circle K gas station, then visited a friend before Deltondo returned to her parents’ home to change her clothes at 9.20pm. Ten minutes later, the two women left in Watkins’ car and picked up Tyrie Jeter, brother of Sheldon Jeter Jr, in downtown Aliquippa.
The three drove to Hank’s Frozen Custard in New Brighton to get ice cream. After about an hour, the friend drove back to Deltondo’s home, leaving her there at 10.44pm and driving off with Tyrie Jeter.
Reports of gunshots were made four minutes later.
The 32-year-old died at the scene and her death has been ruled a homicide
Police at the scene where DelTondo was gunned down outside her family home
According to the affidavit, Tyrie Jeter confirmed to police that he had gone to Hank’s Frozen Custard with the two women and that Deltondo was left outside her parents’ home at 10.44pm by the female friend who said she would return. The friend dropped Tyrie on Main Street, he told police.
Text messages from the female friend’s phone revealed that she texted Deltondo at 10.41pm ‘go for a walk I’ll pick you up after’. Deltondo replied, ‘U serious?’ ‘Haha’ at 10.44pm. Ten minutes later, she texted Deltondo ‘be there soon’ and six minutes after that ‘on my way’. At 11.07pm, she tried to call Deltondo’s cell phone.
Tyrie Jeter allowed police to look at his cell phone messages. At 10.07pm he had a message from his brother Sheldon which read: ‘Is yal there already?’
Tyrie responded: ‘Yea’. At 10.15pm, Sheldon texted Tyrie: ‘I got left huh’ – with six smiley face emojis. At 10.19pm, Sheldon texted Tyrie: ‘Who all you with’.
Then at 10.30pm, Sheldon text Tyrie: ‘Hanks closed.’
Police interviewed Sheldon Jeter on May 14. During the interview, he asked officers why they had come and when they informed him of Deltondo’s murder, he showed ‘no emotion’, according to the affidavit.
Sheldon Jeter told police that he had seen Rachel Deltondo at Circle K with a ‘white girl’ he later identified as the police sergeant’s daughter. Sheldon said Deltondo told him that ‘they were going to get ice cream somewhere’.
Sheldon then told police that he drove two friends who were with him in his silver Nissan to their homes in Center Township and then drove to his own home in Aliquippa.
Today, family, neighbors and friends are struggling to come to terms with her sudden death
DelTondo’s (pictured with a partner in 2015) engagement was called off a few months after she was caught in a steamed up car with a teenage boy
According to the affidavit, Sheldon told police that he was picked up by a woman, whose identity he wouldn’t reveal, and taken to his mother’s home -the address which he wouldn’t reveal.
He said his mother’s boyfriend, who he wouldn’t identify, drove him home at 10pm.
Sheldon showed police a text message that he had sent at 9.29pm to a number – believed to belong to Rachel Deltondo – which read ‘I wont go ok.’
The affidavit states that Deltondo, the female friend and Sheldon Jeter Jr ‘were known to each other and considered friends’.
It also states that the three were linked by a prior law enforcement investigation by the City of Aliquippa police.
A police review of surveillance footage from the Circle K gas station showed Deltondo arriving at the gas station in her female friend’s car.
Police were unable to locate Sheldon Jeter on the surveillance footage at the gas station.
They also believe that Sheldon’s assertion that he met with Deltondo at the Circle K to be false.
Sheldon communicated with Tyrie about accompanying him, Deltondo and the other female to Hank’s Frozen Custard, investigators claimed in the affidavit.
In October 2017, school officials and members of the media received an anonymous email in containing the 2016 Aliquippa police incident report which implied she inappropriately met with a 17-year-old boy.
The report stated that officers were on patrol at around 1.50am on February 6, 2016, when they saw a car parked near the old Aliquippa Hospital.
Police noted that ‘the windows were steamed over and the engine was not running.’ Inside was Deltondo and the teen.
Deltondo reportedly told officers at the time that she was talking with a ‘former student.’
School CEO Brian Hayden said records show the teen was never a registered student at PA Cyber.
Lozier said this exposure was a ‘personal vendetta against’ Deltondo.
She said that ‘she didn’t want her fiancé, identified as Frank Catroppa, 36, to know that she was here parked because he would get mad.’
No charges were brought against Deltondo over the incident, and police drove the teen home that evening. The report was not public knowledge until the anonymous email was sent in October last year.
The school announced they were suspending her the following month.
The leak prompted a state police investigation into Aliquippa Police – which Deltondo cooperated with.