A 29-year-old Jacksonville man is being held without bond on a second-degree felony charge after investigators say he exchanged messages with a student that escalated from non-sexual conversation to lewd conduct over roughly six months. Deantre Diggs Deyoung was booked into the Duval County Jail following his arrest, accused of violating Florida's authority figure statute, which covers adults employed by, volunteering at, or under contract with a school.
According to News4JAX, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office investigated allegations that an authority figure engaged in lewd conduct with a student, and investigators found that the alleged communications between Deyoung and the victim occurred on multiple occasions between November 2025 and May 2026, according to a redacted arrest report. The report did not identify the school involved or Deyoung's specific role there, leaving both details unresolved in the public record. Authorities say the conversations began as non-sexual exchanges before escalating over the following months.
A Supervisor's Warning That Went Unheeded
Investigators found that a supervisor had told Deyoung to stop all communication with the victim before the investigation began, per the same account. Despite that instruction, the messaging reportedly continued, drawing the attention of school officials and eventually law enforcement. The station's report does not specify what prompted the supervisor's initial concern or how the case was ultimately referred to police.
Vanishing Messages Complicated the Investigation
Much of the alleged communication took place through Instagram's Vanish Mode, a feature Meta launched in 2020 that automatically deletes sent messages, photos, and videos once a recipient views them and exits the chat. That design meant investigators could not recover some of the messages directly from the app, and the case ultimately relied on the victim, who had preserved screenshots and recordings of some of the vanishing exchanges before they disappeared.
To fill in the remaining gaps, investigators obtained a search warrant for Deyoung's Instagram account. Under federal stored communications law, Meta requires law enforcement to show probable cause and secure a court-issued warrant before turning over stored account contents such as direct messages and photos. Law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on this process; requests to Meta for user account data climbed 675 percent between 2014 and 2024, according to Straight Arrow News. Investigators can also issue a preservation request under federal law compelling platforms to freeze account records and unread messages for up to 90 days while a warrant works its way through the courts, per Police1.
From Putnam County to a Duval County Cell
Deyoung was not arrested directly in Jacksonville. Booking records from the Putnam County Sheriff's Office show he was first booked into the Putnam County Jail on August 14 under an out-of-county warrant hold for Duval County, without bond. He was later transported from the Putnam County Jail to Jacksonville under that arrest warrant and booked into the Duval County Jail, where he remains held without bond.
What Florida Law Says About Consent
Under Florida Statute Section 800.04(2), neither a victim's lack of chastity nor a minor's purported consent can be raised as a legal defense in prosecutions involving lewd or lascivious conduct. Florida law treats minors as legally incapable of consenting to this kind of conduct by an adult, regardless of how the interaction began. If convicted of the second-degree felony, Deyoung faces up to 15 years in state prison and a fine of up to $10,000 under Florida Statutes Section 775.082 and Section 775.083.
Part of a Recurring Pattern in Jacksonville Schools
Deyoung's arrest adds to a string of similar cases across Jacksonville-area schools this year. Hoodline has reported on a Duval County teacher busted in May, a Northeast Florida high school teacher accused of sending explicit digital messages in May, a charter school teacher accused of exchanging hidden messages through Canva in April, and a former Duval County Public Schools police officer who resigned before being arrested on charges of soliciting a romantic relationship with a student in March. A former Jacksonville charter school dean was also arrested on child sexual battery charges in July 2025. Together, the cases reflect sustained local law enforcement attention on boundaries between school authority figures and students.
