ORIGINAL REPORT, 1:43 PM: You might have seen/heard regional-media reports last night about a 60-year-old man described as an Everett firefighter, arrested in a Seattle sex sting. Seattle Police have just released a little more information about the case, including noting that the arrest happened in West Seattle. This afternoon’s SPD Blotter report says the man was arrested …
… Wednesday afternoon after he showed up for a rendezvous with an underage prostitute, who turned out to be an undercover detective.
The Vice/High-Risk Victims Unit (HRVU) detective had exchanged messages with the 60-year-old firefighter during an online sting targeting men looking for sex with underage girls, and the man had agreed to meet up for sex.
The suspect showed up to meet what he believed was an underage prostitute in West Seattle, and detectives took him into custody.
We expect to have more information after the man’s bail hearing this afternoon and will update this report.
3:41 PM: We have just received the court document with the police account of what happened, following the suspect’s bail hearing (he’s now held in lieu of $50,000 bail). Will transcribe here. First, to answer your most likely question, already asked in comments (and we had a call out to police, as-yet unanswered), “where did this happen?”: The initial rendezvous was set to happen in the Taco Time parking lot in The Triangle, and the suspect was expecting to follow his contact (the nonexistent 15-year-old’s “father”) to an apartment from there. Adding …
This is the story told by the detective who wrote the narrative:
He “placed an ad on a popular fetish website’s personals section” one week ago today. “A few days later,” the suspect contacted him, via e-mail (which included his real name and title “Fire Medic”). The undercover detective told the suspect he “had a 15-year-old daughter who has sex with older men in exchange for US currency.” They continued communicating, and finally agreed that “defendant agreed to pay $150 for sex with a minor female child.” The e-mails, the detective wrote, were very specific regarding what types of sex. The defendant agreed to meet the “father” yesterday at a pre-determined location around noon, then to follow him back to a nearby (location not specified) apartment, park in a “secured parking garage,” go up to an apartment, and engage in the specified sex acts for the specified price.
“Surveillance units” were in place at 11:50 am at the pre-determined location, and “observed defendant arrive at the Taco Time and park facing the agreed-upon meet location. (The detective), who was posing as the father of the 15-year-old minor female, was standing outside the store at the agreed-upon meet location. Defendant intimated that he was nearby and asked (the detective) to bring the 15-year-old down to him. Surveillance units ran the plate of the vehicle defendant was driving and it came back to defendant being the registered owner.” (The document says the suspect had told police he would be driving a black Audi TT.)
After the “surveillance units” identified the person in the vehicle as the 60-year-old suspect, the narrative says, uniformed police arrived and arrested him. He agreed to a search of his car, in which police say they found various sex-related accessories, some of which had been bought at an Everett store less than an hour earlier per a receipt found in the car, as well as Viagra and Cialis. They also say he had $160 in cash on his person.
He’s being held for investigation of commercial sexual abuse of a minor and felony communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office will have to decide by tomorrow whether to charge him.
FRIDAY UPDATE, 5 PM: We don’t have official word on whether charges were filed – the court system lags – but we did find via the King County Jail Register that the suspect posted bond and got out of jail last night.
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