Teacher accused of texting student graphic videos, images

A middle school teacher arrested last week on sexual assault charges is accused of sending graphic videos of himself to a student and asking the student for inappropriate photos in return, according to a police document released Tuesday.

Nicholas Collotta, 40, was arrested and charged last week with felony counts of and lewdness with a child under 14 and child abuse, court records show.

The student and her father reported Collotta on April 19 to the Metropolitan Police Department. He was the girl’s seventh-grade teacher from September 2019 to April 2020, according to the police document.

Collotta taught literary studies to eighth-graders and history to seventh-graders at Democracy Preparatory Academy at Agassi Campus, located at 1201 W. Lake Mead Blvd., according to the school’s website.

A request for comment from the school Tuesday was not immediately answered. A spokesperson for the school last week said Collotta had been fired after the school learned of the pending investigation. At the time, the spokesperson also said that the school had not received word from police as to whether the allegations involved a student, noting that Collotta “passed a complete and full background check” before he was hired.

According to the newly released document, the girl told police Collotta texted her from his personal cell phone asking intimate questions and requesting photos and videos of her. She told police that she deleted the videos and pictures he sent her over the course of the school year.

In one message she showed police, Collotta asked the child, “Am I never going to see you naked?” according to the document.

The girl told police that Collotta taught an all-girls boxing class and often asked her to stay after, when he would kiss her and ask to touch her, according to the document. It was unclear whether the boxing class was held on campus.

In one instance, the girl said she got hit during the boxing class and Collotta touched her breast under her shirt while claiming he was checking for any broken ribs, the police document states.

When Collotta was arrested Wednesday, he told police “this had happened before when he worked in Phoenix,” but did not elaborate, according to the document.

He remains in custody on $50,000 bail and has a court hearing scheduled for Thursday.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.