The husband of a former Mississippi schoolteacher is speaking out after his wife quit their marriage to pursue a forbidden love affair with one of her 16-year-old students.
Isaiah Jackson said he hasn’t seen or heard from his wife, Nicole Jackson, since Sunday after the mother-of-two fled with her former student Oscar O’Neal III. Jackson, 30, and O’Neal are reportedly on the run from police after the former teacher was arrested and charged with sexual battery by a person in a position of trust and authority.
“The Nicole I know would never do this,” Isaiah Jackson told local station WDAM-TV of his wife of four years.
Jackson is now wanted by Hattiesburg police. According to Click2Houston, authorities believe she and her teen lover could be together in a dark blue Chevy Impala.
Rumors of the pair’s student-teacher romance sparked a police investigation in March, after which Jackson was arrested and booked into the Forrest County Jail on April 10. She was released on $100,000 bail, however. Weeks later, Oscar and Lisa O’Neal reported their 16-year-old son missing.
“I know he ran off with a school teacher that was supposed to be teaching him,” the teen’s father, Oscar O’Neal II told the news station.
“This lady with all this authority,” he added. “She was the one supposed to be looking out for my child in school and teaching him, not going with him. I don’t really know much to say, just I want her brought to justice, and I want my son home.”
The devastated father said his son left a hand-written letter on his bed basically explaining that he’d run off to be with his teacher.
“When I opened the door, I found it on his bed surrounded with his pictures,” Lisa O’Neal added. “He put all these pictures of him and his daddy. And he wrote a good letter telling he loved us, we raised him right and it was nothing we did. It was his decision.”
Neither Jackson or the O’Neals have heard from the duo since their disappearance. Jackson said he has faith that the truth will ultimately come out and that justice will be served.
“If the allegations are true against my wife, then I will support him (Oscar O’Neal II) as much as possible,” he said.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Jackson and O’Neal III are asked to contact Hattiesburg Police.
