Hasting Man Charged with Stalking Student

Breaking News-Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom announced on Thursday, that a 25 year old Hastings resident, Cody Woodrow Hansen, was charged by summons with two counts of stalking in connection with numerous messages he reportedly sent to a 12-year-old female student by social media over a 3 month period beginning in November of last year. A the time the messages were sent to the minor student, he was a teacher at an Eagan Middle School. Hansen has since resigned from his teaching position with the Eagan School District. In the allegations that were contained in the complaint, several screen shots from the conversations were saved on the student’s phone and turned over to Eagan Police. Hansen is accused of using a variety of user names to contact the student and acknowledged that he could get into trouble for talking in this manner with the student. At one point the student told Hansen, that was he was doing was illegal and extremely weird. The girl also told police that she did not feel safe to be in Hansen’s classroom. Backstrom released this statement -Criminal activity of this nature is a breach of trust of students and is a violation of the law and school policy. This behavior ultimately hurts both the student and the students parents who have placed their trust in school staff. He adds that Hansen was charged by summons and no court date has yet been set.