Manlius police arrest school support worker accused of texting student nudity, sexual content

Town of Manlius police arrested Edward D. Reed, 33, of Syracuse, around 6 p.m. Monday, July 27, after investigating inappropriate electronic communications with a minor he was mentoring. Police also said Reed was known as Dillon and worked in a school support role tied to the East Syracuse Minoa School District.

The allegations cut directly into the trust families place in school-based adults who work around children. Police described Reed as a contracted school social emotional learning interventionist, while other reporting identified him as a student support specialist or student support contractor assigned to East Syracuse Minoa. In court paperwork, officers said he sent a middle school student text messages that “depicted nudity and sexual conduct.”

That detail has made the case especially unsettling for parents in East Syracuse, Minoa, Manlius and Syracuse, because the alleged contact happened through a school-related relationship rather than a random online exchange. Police said Reed was mentoring the juvenile, a position that suggests access and influence inside a setting where children are supposed to be protected by supervision, screening and reporting rules.

Manlius police also said they were looking for any additional possible victims, a signal that investigators did not view the contact as necessarily limited to one student. That appeal raises the stakes for the East Syracuse Minoa district, since it points to the possibility that other children may have interacted with Reed in ways police now want to examine more closely.

For families, the practical questions are immediate: how a contractor in a child-facing role was vetted, how closely that work was supervised and what reporting channels existed when concerns surfaced. The arrest in late July 2026 now leaves the district and the broader community facing a familiar school-safety test, balancing the protection of students with the need to identify whether any other young people were drawn into the same communications.