Ex-school security officer pleads to helping Kennewick student run away

While a former Kennewick security officer helped a middle school student run away, he won’t spend more time behind bars.

A deputy prosecutor said it would have been hard to prove Anohelico Caulder kidnapped a 14-year-old after she willingly went with him to Oregon last year.

Caulder, 27, entered a “Barr” plea to family abandonment, a felony, as well as guilty pleas to harboring a runaway and obstructing police in Benton County Superior Court last week.

The Barr plea means he doesn’t admit to committing the crime, but wanted to take advantage of the prosecutor’s offer.

The agreement keeps Caulder out of jail due to credit for time served while awaiting trial, but also says he can’t be in a position of authority or working around children.

If Caulder violates any of those conditions, he potentially could serve 11 months in jail.

“This has been a difficult situation with the victim’s family,” Deputy Prosecutor Taylor Anderson said. “ I think overall this is a fair resolution. ... There was no evidence of any sexual (activity) or grooming. I do believe the defendant thought that he was helping the situation.”

But Anderson and the teen’s mother said Caulder made a bad situation worse by interfering.

The girl’s mother told Judge Joe Burrowes that she only knew the security officer as “Mr. C” for months. He suggested he would take the teen away to a better life, took her on vacations and brought her food.

This came after a lengthy struggle with her to take mental health medication and go into counseling.

“My belief is that you were grooming her the way a cult leader would,” her mother said.

She couldn’t understand how the school district would allow an employee to get away with the behavior. Instead, she was met with resistance from the district who wouldn’t say who the officer was.

Since he had joined in the middle of the school year, his information wasn’t on the school’s site.

“You promised some kind of salvation,” the woman said. “You were so concerned about her, but you did this (left her in Oregon). You compounded her problems. .... You poisoned her to her medications.”

Defense Attorney Karla Kane and Caulder explained that he was trying to help a student in what he thought was a bad situation.

He had a horrible upbringing where he was adopted and then given back to the system by the people who initially took him in.

“What saved him was the fact that he met someone that took him into their home,” Kane said. “That feeling of family and behind loved and wanted was what turned his life around.”

When a student came to him claiming that she was being abused, he believed he could step into the same position where someone had helped him. He did talk with school resource officers and others about what he should do.

“My intention was not to harm anyone, but to show the love and respect that I got in high school,” Caulder said.

Burrowes called the case one of the most profound he’s seen as a superior court judge.

“The system failed you,” Burrowes told the teen’s mother. “It’s tough for a superior court judge and public servant to say, because I believe in the system.

“We have to trust that things will get better, while that doesn’t give any of you or your family solace.”

He explained he didn’t know as much about the case as the prosecutor and defense attorney, but from his point of view, many things went wrong. He pointed out that police spent a lot of time and effort looking for the teen when Caulder could have been honest.

“What you did is unimaginable,” Burrowes said. “Basic common sense is that when another human being is in need, you should be calling someone.”

Missing teen

Caulder started as a security guard at Horse Heaven Hills Middle School in Kennewick in October 2023, said Robyn Chastain, the school district’s executive director of communication and public relations.

Shortly after starting, he befriended the girl, according to court documents. He showered her with attention and gave her a necklace with a cross, said court documents.

The teen’s mother said she first heard about Caulder when the teen said there was a new security officer at the school who was “really cool,” according to court documents.

Her mother grew concerned at the end of February or beginning of March when the girl came home and said she wanted to talk with her without her dad present.

The teen explained that she and “Mr. C” had developed a plan where he and his wife would adopt her and move to South Dakota.

She told her mother that “it was the ‘best for her’ and that Mr. C was going to help her ‘find God,’” court documents said.

The teen’s mother explained that she felt Caulder had told her what to say.

The woman said when she called the school, officials didn’t seem to take her seriously.

The district told Caulder not to have any contact with the girl, said court documents.

But he still didn’t stay away from the teen, say officials. During spring break from March 30 to April 7, her mother dropped her off at a friend’s house believing she was staying there that week.

But school officials learned when classes resumed that she’d spent the week with Caulder. It’s not clear where he took the teen during that week.

“Due to this, an investigation at the school was initiated and Caulder was ultimately let go from his job and a trespass warning was issued to him barring him from all (school district) properties,” court documents said.

Caulder’s interactions with the teen didn’t stop, court documents said. He gave the girl a burner phone, and her mother suspected they were meeting after school.

Then about 4 a.m. on June 25, the teen ran away, leaving behind a suicide note. Police didn’t believe she intended to harm herself.

When police went to talk with Caulder, he denied having any contact with her after losing his job.

Believing that Caulder was harboring the runaway, Kennewick police enlisted the help of the FBI in getting a search warrant that let them confirm that the teen had been at Caulder’s home.

Police learned that she had been dropped off in Gresham, Ore. with $300 in cash, and some personal items.

Gresham police found the teen safe the next day, and she was returned to her parents in Tri-Cities.