Township High School District 113 Superintendent Chala Holland wrote in a letter sent to parents Monday that Ricardo Russell, a “former third-shift custodian” at Deerfield High School, had been arrested for allegedly disseminating child pornography, among other charges.
Holland said the district had not been contacted by law enforcement regarding Russell, and had “no detailed information about the charges.” They had only learned about his arrest after a news story earlier that day, and all their information was “based on court records and media reports.”
According to Holland, Russell was employed at Deerfield High beginning in December of 2023, until being put on administrative leave in June of 2024 and being dismissed by the Board of Education the following month. Russell worked the third shift, running from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., throughout his employment, she said.
The district is unaware of any allegations of criminal activity against Russell during his time working as a custodian, Holland said.
Russell faces 25 counts, 13 for child pornography and the remaining 12 for “obscene depiction of a purported child,” according to court documents.
The Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office had reportedly received a cyber tip about an online messenger account being used to upload child pornography files, determined by investigators to be child sexual assault material, with Russell’s address as the potential source.
The matter was transferred to the Waukegan Police Department for further investigation, documents said. Police said when a detective met Russell at his home in Waukegan and asked if he knew about the material, Russell responded, “I might.”
According to court documents, Russell had multiple cell phones, and when asked if any of the child porn videos would have been transferred from one to the other, he said, “It’s possible.”
While Russell gave consent for a search of some of the phones, documents said the State’s Attorney’s Office had to use forensic tools to access one of the devices, recovering an “extensive amount of child pornography,” including images, videos and artificial intelligence.
The “defendant deals in child pornography the way a local drug dealer slings dime-bags on a street corner,” the documents said. Numerous users would contact him, and he’d provide the materials they were looking for, according to court records.
Examinations uncovered “a small fraction of his dealings,” which documents argued pointed “towards a typical act in his day-to-day routine.”
Russell had contacted “apparent coworkers and supervisors,” records said. There were images of the Deerfield High School gymnasium, a message where another user sent an image of a male high school student’s ID badge, an image the defendant took of some gummy bears with a message saying he had found them in the girls’ locker room, and an image of mopping equipment labeled “Girls’ Locker,” according to court records.
