Former Tyler ISD employee sentenced for improper relationship

TYLER — Our news partner KETK is reporting that a former Tyler ISD employee was sentenced on Tuesday to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to having improper relationships with students.

According to an affidavit, on April 15, three Tyler ISD students were discussing about J’Braylon Dewayne Fears, a paraprofessional at the campus, how he was “always surrounding himself around a bunch of little girls while on duty.”

“They were discussing how inappropriate it looked because of how close the girls were to him and how comfortable he looked while they were so close. The teachers were also discussing how students were skipping classes in [a teacher’s] classroom with Fears inside,” the affidavit said.

While the teachers were talking, a student approached them and told them of Fears, who she claimed was seeing a student at another Tyler ISD campus, was flirting with students at the middle school and asking inappropriate questions.

The student was advised to go to the principal and report the issue on a student incident form:

“Something I saw in the hall was he will be waiting outside a class or walking around and eight grade girls will go up to him and start touching him all up on him and he just would let them do it,” the student said in the form.

That same day, officials were made aware of the outcries and opened an investigation against Fears. They conducted forensic interviews with multiple girls from different campus. A student reportedly admitted that Fears had told her to delete messages and Snapchat messages “so that he would not get into trouble” after the student had sent explicit photos.

When confronted by officials on April 25, Fears allegedly admitted to the text messages where he asked for explicit photos. According to records, texts shared between students and Fears revealed that he had made explicit requests to the students. Fears was arrested on May 5 on two counts of improper relationship between an educator and student, online soliciting of a minor and sexual performance by a child.

On Tuesday, Fears was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to the two charges of improper relationship between educator and student.