SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — Andrew McGann, the 28-year-old arrested for the double murder on a trail at Devil's Den State Park in Arkansas, taught in Sand Springs last school year.
The school district confirmed to 2 News Oklahoma that McGann worked at Northwoods Fine Arts Academy as a 5th-grade teacher. We spoke with a Sand Springs family with two young daughters that knew McGann. The family wished to remain anonymous.
"I was shocked," one daughter who had McGann as her after-school teacher said. "I didn't think it was him, but then I saw the picture and really looked at it, and I was like that's him."
WATCH: Sand Springs family reacts to Devil's Den arrest
OSU Tulsa confirmed to 2 News that McGann graduated from the school in 2022 with a degree in elementary education. This past year at Northwoods, parents say kids loved him.
"My kids would come home and say he was one of their top three favorite teachers," the mother said. "Like, they just really liked him."
The family says that despite everybody liking McGann, some had their concerns.
"The first time he came to our school, my friend for some reason said she had a bad feeling about him," one daughter said. "But I was like, he's nice. If he wasn't associated with someone, he would just sit back and stare."
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The other daughter added "he just let us play on our computers, and he would stare at us a lot."
The school district released a statement to 2 News, saying McGann resigned his position to move out of state, adding, "every employee undergoes a mandatory background check for the district when they're hired." The district says McGann passed every check. The mother says after all of this, parents in Sand Springs are understandably uneasy.
"I mean, that's somebody that their child was around for an entire year," the mother said. "I mean, parents are just shocked by it."
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