AFP has learned that the newly hired football coach at Waynesboro High School, Shonn Bell, pleaded guilty to interference/resisting arrest and operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol charges from 2008 and 2010 in Iowa, and faced a rape charge in Virginia in 1993 that was later dismissed.
We reached out to Waynesboro Public Schools on Friday to ask if these matters involving Bell had come up during the hiring process.
The response, from Ryan Barber, the assistant superintendent who heads up the human resources office at Waynesboro Public Schools:
“As part of our employment process, searches of the FBI database, Virginia State Police database, and central registry for sex offenders are completed for all employees. Currently, the school division does not know of crimes that would constitute a legal barrier to employment,” Barber said.
The response from Barber also noted that Bell is “employed in a school division in Iowa,” a reference to Bell’s current job – according to his LinkedIn page, Bell is employed as a campus security officer at Monroe Elementary School in Davenport, Iowa.
In addition to being hired as the football coach at Waynesboro High School, Bell was also hired to fill a newly created position in security at the high school.
Splash hire
It was a bit of a splash hire to get Bell into the WHS football job, considering that Bell, a Waynesboro native and alum of Stuarts Draft High School, has an NFL pedigree – he played in two games with the San Francisco 49ers in 1999, and was in training camp with the Houston Oilers in 1996 – with additional pro-football stints in NFL Europe, the Arena Football League and the Indoor Football League.
A 1996 graduate of Clinch Valley College, now University of Virginia-Wise, Bell was an NAIA All-American at tight end before embarking on his pro career.
Bell’s LinkedIn resume also mentions a three-year period as a paraprofessional wide-receivers coach at United Township High School in East Moline, Ill., and a Wikipedia page for Bell reports that he had served as the defensive coordinator for the Quad City Raiders, an apparently now-defunct semi-pro football team in the Quad Cities region in Iowa and Illinois.
“Coach Bell will be a great asset for WHS and Waynesboro Public Schools,” said Jake Peeling, the athletics and activities director at Waynesboro High School, in a statement in a press release from the school system announcing the hire on April 18.
“He is someone I think can inspire our athletes to greatness, instill discipline, and foster a culture of teamwork and resilience. He is not just a football coach but someone who possesses the ability to cultivate character, both on and off the field,” Peeling said.
Background check
The matter involving Bell’s background was brought to our attention on Friday by a parent of a Waynesboro High School student-athlete who had also gotten in touch with the administration at WHS, the school system’s central office and members of the Waynesboro School Board.
“I would like to thank you for hiring an African American to coach these young men. I have said for many years that many young men and women in Waynesboro need a strong Black leader to follow. Unfortunately, in your quest to find that leader, you chose to overlook several of Mr. Bell’s criminal records,” the parent wrote in an email that went out to the school officials and was forwarded to AFP.
The email detailed research into Bell’s criminal record that AFP has since been able to independently verify.
The court record indicates the offense date was Aug. 21, 1993.
The case was brought to a grand jury in Wise Circuit Court on Jan. 18, 1994, and after the grand jury failed to return an indictment, the charge was dropped on Jan. 24, 1994.
We’ve not been able to find any news coverage of this 1993-1994 case through online searches to learn more about what was alleged or why the case was ultimately dropped.
We have sent messages to Bell through his LinkedIn and Facebook accounts for comment on the rape charge and the other charges that we’re about to delineate.
At this stage, we’ve not received a response; we will update this story when we do.
The court record lists the offense date as Dec. 27, 2008.
Bell was sentenced to 120 days of jail, with all but two days suspended, and a year of unsupervised probation, which the court record discharged on Oct. 14, 2010.
In 2010, another Iowa court record indicates that Bell pleaded guilty to a simple misdemeanor charge of interference/resisting arrest, with the offense date listed as May 29, 2010, the guilty plea being entered on July 12, 2010, and the sentence being a $65 fine.
In 2016, another court record from Iowa lists two serious misdemeanor charges for Bell – for possession of a controlled substance-first offense, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
The offense date, according to the court record, was April 1, 2016.
Bell was arraigned on May 19, 2016, pleaded not guilty, and both cases were ultimately dismissed on July 22, 2016.
The Iowa court system also has a record of a petition for relief from domestic abuse filed against Bell on Oct. 26, 2016, that was later dismissed on Feb. 1, 2017, and several records related to child support debt, the most recent of those filed on July 17, 2023.
No ‘legal barrier to employment’
The way we approached reporting on this story was to forward the email that we’d received from the parent to Barber to ask for comment on what had been alleged, and to ask about the process for conducting criminal background checks before final hiring decisions are made.
After getting this response – “As part of our employment process, searches of the FBI database, Virginia State Police database, and central registry for sex offenders are completed for all employees. Currently, the school division does not know of crimes that would constitute a legal barrier to employment” – we went back to Barber with details from our independent findings from the review of court records in Virginia and Iowa.
His response was to reaffirm.
“My statement is the same,” Barber wrote back.
Again, we’ve reached out Bell to get his side of this, sent two messages, haven’t gotten anything back yet; we will update this story when we do.
We’ve also reached out to Debra Freeman, the chair of the Waynesboro School Board.
We haven’t heard back from Freeman; we will update the story when we do.
We also shared the response from Barber with the parent who brought this matter to our attention.
This was the parent’s response:
“They have clear facts in front of them with Mr. Bell and are still choosing to move forward. If there aren’t any ‘legal barriers for employment,’ then what about ethics and morals?” the parent wrote back in an email.
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Chris Graham
