A former Marion County Sheriff’s Office school resource officer was taken into custody on Monday and charged with four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child.
Christian Linan, 34, was transported to the county jail, where he was being held without bail. Linan, who has resigned, had been an SRO at Dunnellon High School since 2022. He had been a sheriff’s deputy since 2016.
“Every day, I have a thousand employees working hard and doing what’s right. So, it hurts each one of us when someone does something like this and casts a shadow over the good that the rest of these deputies are doing, ” Sheriff Billy Woods said in a prepared statement.
“All of my deputies know the standards I set for the office of sheriff. In fact, they take an oath to uphold those standards and they know that I have zero tolerance for this kind of action. I am glad that the victim had the courage to come forward and let us know,” the sheriff said.
Sheriff’s office report
According to Master Sgt. Thomas Tingue’s report, the victim, a former student and now adult, contact the sheriff’s office to report she and Linan had been in a sexual relationship. She said she was 15 at the time when the two met and he reportedly had sex with her at his residence in 2019.