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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Small-Town Fire Captain Arrested for Child Porn

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (CN) - A fire captain was arrested after admitting he hid a camera phone in a 12-year-old girl's bathroom, officials say.

South Lake Tahoe Fire Captain Mark McLeod WyGant admitted hiding an iPhone in a 12-year-old girl's bathroom, according to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.

He was arrested Jan. 29, pending a federal investigation, the City of South Lake Tahoe said in a statement. South Lake Tahoe is in Northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

Wygant was put on paid administrative leave immediately after his arrest and resigned his position Feb. 4, following an independent investigation by the City of South Lake Tahoe, the city said in a Feb. 4 statement.

WyGant is in custody at the Sacramento County Jail and is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 13, Lauren Horwood, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office, told Courthouse News. Horwood declined to comment on anything related to the minor victim.

A flash drive with over 5,000 pornographic images of children was found in an un-unassigned locker at a South Lake Tahoe fire station, FBI Special Agent Glenn G. Norling said in an affidavit requesting a warrant for WyGant's arrest.

Some showed a girl, identified as Minor Victim #1, showering and getting out of the shower, apparently taken in March and April of 2011, according to the affidavit.

"Minor Victim #1 would have been approximately 12 years of age in 2011," Norling wrote.

A fellow officer told Norling about the flash drive on or around Jan. 12, 2015, the affidavit says. South Lake Tahoe police obtained a search warrant for the flash drive on Jan. 19 and initiated an investigation, according to the affidavit. The flash drive had over 5,000 sexually explicit images, including over 50 videos, of girls estimated to be between the ages of four and 13 years old in various sex acts with a male or males, according to the affidavit.

Authorities interviewed WyGant on Jan. 29, "and he admitted to surreptitiously placing a camera (an iPhone 3 cellular phone) in a bathroom in Minor Victim #1's residence numerous times to record Minor Victim #1 nude for the purposes of the subject's sexual gratification," the affidavit states. (Parentheses in original.)

WyGant also admitted buying "spy cameras" on eBay and putting four of them in a bathroom at the girl's house to record her nude from different angles, according to the affidavit. WyGant told police he had close to 100 such videos of her, it says.

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