Delaware gym teacher, coach charged with using Instagram and texts to sexually solicit 13-year-old student

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Ricardo J. Vila Jr., a gym teacher and baseball coach in Delaware’s Colonial School District, was recently on Instagram when he reached out to an eighth-grade girl who attends his school.

“This who I think it is?” wrote Vila, who used the screen name “rickv0502” on the popular social media platform. The girl confirmed that the account was hers.

That exchange occurred about 8 p.m. on March 12, court records say. Over the next four days, the 39-year-old gym teacher at George Read Middle School near New Castle communicated with the 13-year-old in conversations on Instagram and later through text messages that became increasingly sexual in nature, state police say.

In graphic messages that included photographs of his crotch as he wore blue gym shorts, police say Vila told the girl how “horny” he was and described sex acts he wanted to engage in with her. Vila also asked the child for explicit photos of herself, but she did not send any, police said.

School officials learned about the lewd advances and contacted state police. Police assigned to the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force interviewed the teenager’s parents last week and reviewed the conversations.

Their intense investigation culminated Monday morning when police took Vila into custody and charged him with 17 felonies, including sexual solicitation of a child, sexual abuse of a child by a person of trust, and dangerous crime against a child under 14. Court records reviewed by WHYY News don’t say he had physical sexual contact with the girl.

Vila’s screen name, “rickv0502,” referred to his birthday, which is May 2, court records show.

Vila, who lives in Smyrna, appeared before a magistrate and was sent to prison in lieu of $634,000 cash bail, authorities said.

After latest educator arrest, AG says ‘child predators are priority’

Vila is the latest in a series of Delaware educators charged with sex crimes against children and other students or child-porn dealing.

Those arrested include then-Alexis I. du Pont Middle School Principal Tasha Oliver, who was indicted in August on multiple counts of rape and sexual abuse of a student more than a decade ago when Oliver taught at Stanton Middle School. A WHYY News investigation revealed Oliver’s arrest last week, and the failure by law enforcement authorities and Red Clay Consolidated School District officials to notify families and the public last year after Oliver was charged and fired.

Last year, Brandywine School District therapist John Ervin Arnold, who had bogus advanced degrees, was charged with raping a 5-year-old relative. Last week, Arnold pleaded no contest to two second-degree rape counts.

In January, St. Anne’s Episcopal School Principal Justin Lee Smith was charged with 25 counts of dealing in child pornography.

In February, police charged George V. Kirk Middle School teacher David DiFilippo with sexual solicitation of a 13-year-old student. Authorities said DiFilippo was grooming the girl for sex with explicit messages and once rubbed her leg while she was alone with him in his classroom. The school is in the Christina School District.

Authorities announced Monday’s arrest of Vila within hours of him being taken into custody, accompanied by the promise to root out child predators at schools.

“Any case with a child victim is heinous. Cases where the abuser held a position of trust are beyond the pale,” Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in a written statement. “Child predators are our priority. We will find them, we will charge them without compromise, and we will bring them to justice.”

Unlike the Oliver case, where Red Clay officials never notified families about the fact that Oliver was under investigation or arrested, George Read’s principal sent school families a notice of a pending investigation on March 17, the day police interviewed the girl’s parents about Vila.

The letter from Principal Nick Wolfe didn’t say a teacher was suspected of soliciting a student but said the matter involved “a weekend incident involving members of the [school] community” and that “students were not in danger.”

After Monday’s arrest, district spokeswoman Lauren Wilson said in a statement that did not identify Vila that a George Read employee had been charged with “multiple criminal offenses” and that Colonial officials are “cooperating fully.”

Wilson’s statement noted that “the staff member has not been in the presence of students since the incident was reported.”

Wilson would not respond to questions from WHYY News about Wilson’s tenure teaching at George Read or coaching baseball and lacrosse at William Penn High School.

But Jennings’ office confirmed that he coached lacrosse in 2021 and 2022, and until the sex solicitation investigation began last week, Vila was assistant coach for the junior varsity baseball team.

State payroll records, however, show that Vila began working for Colonial in 2020. Last year, Vila was paid $72,100 by Colonial, including $5,000 in unspecified extra pay.

Anyone with information about Vila and possible criminal activity is urged to contact state police Det. Kevin Kelleher at 302-365-8436.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the description of how state police were notified of the alleged contact between Vila and the student.