Tad Cummins Pleads Not Guilty on Kidnapping Case of Teen Student
Tad Cummins, the accused kidnapper of 15-year-old student Elizabeth Thomas, pleaded not guilty to the federal charges filed against him.
Cummins is currently being accused of transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of engaging in criminal sexual conduct. The former high school teacher is also facing charges of obstruction of justice after he allegedly threw away their phones, changed their appearances and did almost everything to prevent the authorities from finding them. Based on reports, he and Thomas went missing from Maury County, Tennessee, on March 13 and were later found in a remote cabin in Northern California on April 20 after someone alerted the police of their location.
At the moment, the authorities are still debating whether to charge the suspect of statutory rape. According to the investigation, Cummins had sex with the minor while they were on the run. His estranged wife, Jill, said that he also admitted the truth to her. She added that her husband and Thomas were close even before they ran away together. Cummins was the teenager's teacher at Culleoka Unit School, where he was also under investigation after a student told the school administrators that she saw the two kissing inside his classroom.
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"He was getting really close to her. A father-daughter close, a friendship close, and I knew that. I discussed that with him. And explained to him, 'She's your student, you can't be so close to her. Never did I think there was a romantic thing between the two of them. There were no signs of that," Jill said in an interview with Inside Edition.
Meanwhile, Cummins' lawyers continue to argue that Thomas voluntarily left with their client.
In another report, Thomas allegedly told her friends that she was in love with her teacher and that her family had no say if she wanted to date a 50-year-old man. She reportedly said that she considered the five weeks that she and Cummins were on the run as "the time of her life." Her family, of course, maintained that the teen would never willingly leave the state and that Cummins must have forced her. The teen is currently staying in a special treatment center for trauma victims and has refused to return to her family home.
