SISD Superintendent commits suicide

The Seagraves school superintendent who was under FBI investigation for invasive visual recording was found dead Friday morning from has been deemed a selfinfl icted gunshot wound.

According to reports, the Shallowater Sheriff’s Offi ce answered a call this past Friday morning at a location on North FM 2378, west of Shallowater, where they found 43-year-old Joshua Neil Goen with a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest. EMS and the Lubbock County Medical Examiner were notifi ed, and a preliminary investigation has deemed the death a suicide.

On Monday, Dec. 5, Goen was arrested for invasive visual recording and held in a Gaines County jail until he was able to post a $75,000 bond and was released from jail pending completion of the case. If convicted, Goen would have faced a maximum of two years in custody.

On Tuesday, Dec. 6, the FBI and other law enforcement executed a search warrant on Goen’s residence. The investigation has been a collaborative effort between the Gaines County Sheriff’s Office, Hale County Sheriff’s Office, Seagraves Sheriff’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations in Lubbock, and FBI/Lubbock.

According to reports, investigators believe Goen placed a recording device in a changing room with the intent to record a visiting girls basketball team on Nov. 15 without their consent.

Security camera footage from the school showed a man identified as Goen, enter the visiting girls locker room from the hall but isn’t seen leaving.

Investigators searched the recording device and found three videos from that day, the warrant states. One of the videos showed an empty locker room; a second video shows the Hale Center basketball players entering the locker room; and a third video appeared to be interrupted when the device was unplugged.

Goen had been the superintendent at Seagraves since 2017 and was put in administrative leave by the SIDS school board after being informed on Nov. 22 of an investigation prompted by the Hale Center High School girls basketball team accidentally finding a recording device in the Seagraves girls dressing room.

According to a statement regrading the accusations of his students being the target of illegally recorded video, Hale ISD superintendent Steven Pyburn said a recording device that looked like a phone charger was left in the locker room. The girls set a speaker in front of the device and were able to block the view of any girls changing.

The statement also said one of the last girls to leave the locker room noticed the device and took it — thinking it was a phone charger left behind by one of the players. After none of the girls claimed it, it was left on the bus. The next day an 8th grade student found the recording device on the bus and turned it over to Tyson Jones, Hale Center dean of students, who turned it over to the county’s school resource officer, Colby Neil.

Seagraves ISD was notified on Nov. 22 of the FBI investigation, and Goen was put on paid administrative leave by the SISD school board pending the outcome. High School principal Dylan Sellers is acting as the interim superintendent.

The SISD board of trustees president Adolfo Cortez Jr. said in a statement on Tuesday: “The Seagraves ISD Board of Trustees and the entire Seagraves community is shocked and disturbed by these allegations and has and will fully cooperate with law enforcement. Right now, this wound is fresh, and we will need to find strength from one another as our community works to heal. We hope you will join us in supporting our teachers, counselors, and administrators as we work with our students through this diffi cult time and the challenges ahead.”

Following the Friday death of Goen, Seagraves ISD issued a statement, “Our deepest condolences go out to the entire Goen family. We are a small community, and we all mourn with the family for their loss, and we will all rally together to support them in their time of bereavement.”