The Island

Police are investigating whether a stranger was present on the Edison Elementary School campus on November 3.

Alameda Police Lt. Bill Scott said the department is trying to figure out whether the man who appeared on the school yard during a recess was a parent or someone who didn’t belong. He said the man was not the same person police arrested following a chase that led onto the Otis campus a week earlier.

“We’re still trying to figure out who it is. It could have been a parent for all we know,” Scott said. “It’s odd, for sure. It doesn’t mean it was illegal.”

Parents at the school got an e-mail from the school’s principal, Marcheta Williams, saying that a man came on the school yard during a recess that day and appeared to be creating a video or audio recording of students as they played. When a teacher approached the man to tell him he needed a visitor’s sticker, he indicated he was recording and asked her to be quiet, the e-mail said.

When a second teacher approached the man to give him the same information, the e-mail said, he became agitated, jumped up and down and screamed, “You’ve f***ed up my recording!” and left.

It said the man claimed he was making the recording for his daughter, but that he refused to give his name and that none of the students recognized him. The man was described as being a white male, around age 50, of average build and wearing a blue Edison sweatshirt.

“Please keep your eyes open,” Williams wrote to the school’s parents.