Former Riverside Elementary School teacher sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex crimes against minors

A former Riverside Elementary School paraeducator and high school coach will spend 30 years in prison for recording himself engaging in sex acts with underage boys, sending the videos to other children, downloading child pornography and trading sex acts for vapes.

Dallas M. Shuler, who was 28 at the time of his arrest in 2024, was sentenced Wednesday. He pleaded guilty in October to 12 counts of various crimes against children, like online enticement and producing and distributing child pornography.

At the time of his arrest, Shuler had been working as a paraeducator at Riverside Elementary School in Chattaroy for three years and a coach at Riverside High School for six. He told investigators he is “sexually excited” by children and has solicited explicit content from at least 25 of them for several years, court records say.

Shuler also admitted he arranged meetings with 14-year-old boys on two separate occasions in 2023, according to court documents. He told one teen he was 22 years old and met him in woods near University High School. Shuler recorded the two performing oral sex acts on each other, which he later distributed and exchanged for more sexual videos of minors, court records said. In another encounter, he met a teen through Snapchat and agreed to meet at a Newport campground where he supplied the teen with vapes in exchange for sex acts.

Shuler initially denied any sexual activity with minors and “adamantly” denied explicit interactions with local children, according to court records. Shuler has been in “plenty of situations where I could, but I never, never would,” he told investigators. Shuler was placed on administrative leave after the school became aware of the law enforcement investigation.

Investigators from the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from the FBI, began investigating a sexually explicit video at the time of two boys around the age of 10. Shuler was screen-recording the video when he received a call on the app, and investigators were able to obtain an image of his face, according to court records. Investigators were able to obtain other child sexual abuse material from a messaging app on his phone that depicted children as young as infants being sexually assaulted, the documents say.

Shuler is ordered to pay around $83,000 in victim restitution and must register as a sex offender upon his release from prison.