'Cool But Creepy Mom': Los Gatos Reacts To Shocking Arrest

LOS GATOS, CA — The Los Gatos High School mother who was arrested last week on 39 criminal counts related to accusations that she repeatedly pressured teenagers to have sex while supplying them with alcohol at parties that she hosted was known to other parents as “the cool but creepy mom,” according to the Mercury News.

Shannon O’Connor, 47, known in the community as Shannon Bruga, was arrested last Saturday in Eagle, Idaho, where she recently moved.

She had two sons — a 15-year-old son at the high school and another 13-year-old — and was accused of inviting her son's minor friends to her home for parties and providing them with alcohol to the point where they would "vomit, be unable to stand and fall unconscious," according to a synopsis of findings released by the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office. Prosecutors said the incidents took place over an eight-month period between summer 2020 and spring 2021.

O'Connor then encouraged the minors to engage in sexual activity with each other while she sometimes watched and facilitated, prosecutors said.

Related: Los Gatos Woman Accused Of Hosting Teen Parties With Alcohol, Sex

There were 10 teenage boys and two girls in the Eagle home when O'Connor was arrested, and Idaho detectives suspected that she could have been repeating the behavior that she was accused of in Los Gatos, according to the Ada County Sheriff’s office.

Detectives in Idaho began investigating O'Connor earlier this summer from another family that had connected with O'Connor, but tried to "sever their relationship" after hearing about the investigation in Santa Clara County, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office. O'Connor then began harassing the family, the sheriff's office said.

The investigation in Idaho was ongoing when they received an arrest warrant for O'Connor. Most of the kids who were found in O'Connor's home had spent the night there when she was arrested Saturday afternoon, according to the sheriff's office.

O'Connor's two teenage sons were placed in the custody of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare after they were declared to be in imminent danger. The other kids were released after detectives contacted their parents.

'Doing Weird Stuff'

O’Connor’s arrest was the main topic around Los Gatos High School on Wednesday, according to the Mercury News. One student told the paper that the allegations were “scary.”

“I’m glad she’s gone,” the sophomore girl said. “It makes me feel safer.”

A parent added to the Mercury News that O’Connor was “doing weird stuff, chatting up my son on Snapchat,” and that the general consensus was that she left Los Gatos for Idaho because of the impending charges.

During the parties, O'Connor would attempt to pressure girls into entering rooms where boys were waiting, and if they refused, she would "take them aside for a private conversation" until they entered the rooms, according to the synopsis.

She often used Snapchat to communicate with minors, and in one instance took a boy's phone while he was intoxicated and pretended to be him, texting a minor female in an attempt to initiate a sexual encounter, investigators said.

O'Connor is being held in the Ada County Jail on a $900,000 bond and is expected to be extradited to Santa Clara County. She will be arraigned at a later date, according to prosecutors, and faces incarceration if convicted.