Saturday, 20 Apr 2024

Married Navy vet suspended over alleged affair with teen ROTC cadet

He’s sunk.

A married Navy veteran and ROTC leader has been suspended from city schools after his enraged wife exposed an illicit relationship with one of his teenage cadets, officials said Wednesday.

Senior Naval Sciences instructor Edward Gunning, 55, a substitute teacher at the High School for Health Careers and Sciences in Manhattan, began trysting with the 17-year-old girl in early 2018, according to the Special Commissioner of Investigation.

The teen — who attended the High School for Law and Public Service that shares a campus and ROTC program with Gunning’s school — would routinely meet him after class for trysts at his apartment and slip out before his wife returned home from work, according to the SCI.

Gunning and the girl exchanged dozens of sexually explicit text messages — with one note from the teacher telling her that “I love the taste of your p—y and I love eating it,” according to an SCI press release.

“Although we cannot criminally refer this matter due to the age of Student A at the time of her sexual relationship with Gunning, any sexual encounter with a student is improper and an egregious abuse of authority as a New York City School teacher,” said SCI chief Anastasia Coleman in a statement.

The pair began their illicit relationship in April 2018 and ended it by July that year. Gunning’s wife, Christine Kelly, tipped off her husband’s assistant principal, Michael Bordwell, in December 2018.

Kelly told probers that Gunning began to distance himself emotionally around that time and eventually declared that he was no longer interested in a sexual relationship with his wife after 17 years of marriage.

The scorned spouse had grown increasingly suspicious of Gunning as he constantly texted with the teenager — a girl she had met face to face at several school functions.

“Kelly further stated that Gunning regularly hid his phone and turned his body away from her while texting…,” according to the report.

Her ugly inklings intensified in June 2018 after she found an unfamiliar hairbrush in the bathroom for which Gunning had no explanation.

The following day, Kelly got her hands on building surveillance footage that showed her husband and the teen walking in at 2:30 p.m. and the girl leaving alone at 5:30 p.m. — just before she was expected to get home from work.

In November 2018 — after Gunning and the teen had apparently split — Kelly stumbled on text messages that were synced to a shared laptop that further exposed Gunning activities.

“I really really love you,” the teen wrote to Gunning.

“I am so happy and excited about our time together,” he gushed.

Gunning, who was suspended pending the probe’s conclusion, declined to speak to investigators through an attorney. He is no longer eligible for employment in city schools, according to the SCI.

“This individual was immediately suspended without pay when we were made aware of these deeply disturbing allegations. We are in the process of firing him,” said Schools spokesman Will Mantel.

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