January 1, 29-Year-Old Woman Arrested After Enrolling as High School Freshman

Police arrested a 29-year-old woman after she allegedly used fraudulent documents to enroll as a student at a high school in New Jersey.

The woman, Hyejeong Shin, provided a false birth certificate to the New Brunswick Board of Education in order to enroll as a “juvenile” high school student, the New Brunswick Police Department said in a news release.

Shin was charged with one count of providing a false government document with the intent to verify one’s identity or age, police said.

The department noted that in New Jersey, schools are required “to immediately enroll unaccompanied children, even in the absence of records normally required for enrollment.”

“Proof of guardianship is not necessary to immediately enroll an unaccompanied child or youth,” police said. “Although a school district might request documents such as a birth certificate to verify a child’s age, a school district may not prevent or discourage a child, including an unaccompanied child, from enrolling in or attending school because he or she lacks a birth certificate or has records that indicate a foreign place of birth, such as a foreign birth certificate.”

New Brunswick High School officials said Shin attended classes for four days before they caught onto her and booted her from the property.

“She was pretending to be a freshman, which is more surprising because I don’t believe she looks like a freshman,” one student told CBS News. “At the same time, it was very unsafe for the school and most of the students in there.”

Students fear the woman had a terrifying motive

The incident rattled the local community, and New Brunswick High School (NBHS) students fear that Shin may have been attempting to lure students into sex trafficking.

“I think she was really trying to traffic young women which is what anybody who hears about this needs to be aware of your surroundings,” NBHS senior Abrianna Martin told NBC New York. “I heard she was still trying to contact some of the young girls here even after we found out.”

“From what I’ve been told, [the woman’s] intentions were to lure kids to a specific street in New Brunswick and possibly traffic them,” community member Michael Castro told New Brunswick Today. “It was so easy for her to engage with these students, teachers, and faculty members because no one ever did a thorough investigation of where this woman came from.”

Some students said Shin sent them text messages asking to hang out.

“Some of the girls I know, [Shin] did ask them to hang out at Commercial Avenue, but they never showed up, and she started acting weird with them,” one student said. “It’s scary because you never know what could happen.”

A police investigation is currently underway. In the meantime, superintendent Aubrey Johnson said that administrators will review their enrollment process to determine ways to better identify falsified documents in the future.

Sources: CBS News | CBS New York | New Brunswick Today | NBC New York