It appears that one teacher sex scandal may have turned deadly for one of the parties involved.

Tamara Hofmann, 48, a math teacher at El Dorado High School in Chandler, AZ, may be at the center of a love triangle that turned deadly for her supposed student lover.  According to reports, Ms. Hofmann called the cell phone of the mother of one of her students, Sam Valdivia, and asked that she wake her son so that she could speak to him about a school matter.  While the mother was suspicious due to the hour, she did awaken her son to speak with his teacher.  At some point after that, Mr. Valdivia, 18, snuck out to meet Ms. Hofmann at her house for a late night rendezvous.

At 2:40 AM, Ms. Hofmann’s boyfriend (some reports say fiance), and a former student of her’s, Sixto Balbuena, arrived at Ms. Hofmann’s house after driving there from California while on leave from the Navy.  When the 20-year-old arrived at the house, he found he found his girlfriend naked in the same room where Mr. Valdivia was standing in nothing but his boxer shorts.  According to Mr. Balbuena’s statement to the police, Mr. Valdivia attempted to apologize for the situation, but the sailor attacked him by throwing repeated punched.  Then, also according to the report,  he “wanted to teach (Valdivia) a lesson,” and stabbed him in his side with a kitchen knife.

After the stabbing, Mr. Balbuena threw Ms. Hofmann to the ground and jumped on her while asking how long she had been cheating on him with Mr. Valdivia.  At some point after this it was Balbuena who called the police and paramedics to respond to the house.  Paramedics treated Valdivia on the scene, but he later died in the hospital.  Balbuena is currently being held in jail on 2nd degree murder charges and has not posted his $100,000 bail.

This is not the first time the Police have been involved with Hofmann and Balbuena.   There is another report that Ms. Hofmann was suspended from her previous job at Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe, AZ after she was discovered around 1 AM on November 1st, 2006 in a parked car with Mr. Babuena.  They were parked in a car on a darkened street, well away from either of their homes, when people living in the area grew suspicious and called the police.  When they arrived and questioend the pair, Ms. Hofmann spun a tale of how Balbuena was a family friend and she had pulled over to dump water out of a leaky ice chest.  When the police found her bra in , the then 17-year-old, Balbuena’s pocket, she said she had changed clothes in the car earlier, alone, and he had moved her clothes to the back seat; she did not, however, know he had taken the bra.

As the police continued to question the pair, Ms. Hofmann said that Mr. Balbuena’s parents knew he was with her, but when the police called them to verify, they were not aware where their son was.  After their initial surprise to the news, they informed the police that the woman was their son’s math teacher.  The police then questioned the pair as to if they had had sex.  Both parties denied that they had, so the police wrote up a report on the incident and forwarded it to the school district.  Ms. Hofmann was suspended the next day.

After her suspension, she moved on to El Dorado High School, a charter school for at-risk students, where it is reported Mr. Balbuena followed her there, and she eventually met Mr. Valdivia.  She has now  been suspended from her job at El Dorado High School while an investigation into the allegations of her sleeping with students is investigated.  At this time no charges have been filed against her, but the police are investigating if any activities took place before either man was 18.

This women now joins the roll call of teacher sex scandals for 2009!

• Christine McCallum, Boston, MA
• Lisa Lavoie, Holyoke, MA
• Christy Lynn Martin, St. Petersburg, FL
• Linda Nef and Valynne Bowers, Bountiful, UT
• Sarah L. Tolzien, Richton Park, IL
• Autumn Faulkner, Randolph County, WV
• Lindsay Massaro, Hackettstown, NJ
• Lauren Breslin, Vineland, NJ
• Kristina Anna Baeta, Union City, CA
• Raeanna Jewell, Apache Junction, AZ
• Jennifer Lea Burton, Orangefield, TX
• Jennifer Marie Collier, Jacksonville, FL
• Gina Marie Watring, Durham, NC
• Alison M. Peck, Greenfield, MO
• Maria Guman Hernandez, Hialeah, FL
• Helen Goddard, London, England
• Amy Elsworth & Brian Drake, Waterford, MI