{"id":181451,"date":"2026-03-06T23:54:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T23:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/181451\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T23:54:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T23:54:06","slug":"st-lucie-county-school-bus-driver-arrested-on-charges-involving-9-year-old-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/181451\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Lucie County school bus driver arrested on charges involving 9-year-old student"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">A St. Lucie County school bus driver was arrested on lewd and lascivious molestation charges involving a 9-year-old student, the St. Lucie County Sheriff&#8217;s Office said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Deputies said they arrested Edwin Garcia, 71, of Port St. Lucie, after receiving reports on Wednesday alleging Garcia had asked the 9-year-old student to lift her dress while she was riding the bus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to deputies, a school resource reputy immediately initiated a preliminary investigation and during the follow-up investigation, it was revealed that the driver may have made inappropriate comments to the child and possibly pinched her over her clothing in the pelvic area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The case was referred to the St. Lucie County Sheriff\u2019s Office Criminal Investigations Division.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">As a result of the investigation Garcia was arrested on two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation of a victim under the age of 12 by an offender 18 years of age or older.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Garcia was taken to St. Lucie County Jail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Deputies said anyone who may have been a victim, or who has additional information related to this case, is encouraged to contact St. Lucie County Sheriff&#8217;s Office Det. Cpl. Hunter Limb at (772) 462-7300 or email CrimeTips@stluciesheriff.gov.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A St. Lucie County school bus driver was arrested on lewd and lascivious molestation charges involving a 9-year-old&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-181451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}