La. mom and adult daughter arrested for allegedly enrolling in high school with fake birth certificate
06/15/2023 1:21 pm PDT
ST. CHARLES PARISH, La. (TCD) -- A 46-year-old woman and her 28-year-old daughter were arrested after they allegedly attempted to enroll the daughter in high school and present her as a teenager.
According to a statement, on May 29, the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office received information from the public schools superintendent about an adult female in her 20s posing as a student at Hahnville High School. School officials conducted an investigation and learned Marta Serrano-Alvarado enrolled her daughter, Martha Gutierrez-Serrano, in the school.
In a news briefing Wednesday, June 14, St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said Serrano-Alvarado provided a school with a birth certificate from Honduras that listed the daughter’s age as 17. The school received a tip about Gutierrez-Serrano being an adult, and investigators determined it was "quite likely that the birth certificate was counterfeit."
Champagne said he was able to verify "the birth certificate was falsified."
The two women were arrested June 14 on a charge of injuring public records.
Gutierrez-Serrano enrolled at Hahnville High in June 2022 after arriving from Honduras in late 2021.
According to Champagne, there was nothing nefarious and she "did nothing inappropriate."
He said, "She merely attended school. She wanted to learn English. She wanted to become proficient in English and further her education."
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