Officer Leon Outwater sent 20 messages from a Village of
Kobuk cell phone, state troopers say. The child's mother caught on and called
police.
BY DOYLE MURPHY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
A small town Alaska cop sexted a 12-year-old girl repeatedly
during a drunken, on-duty bender, authorities say.
Leon Outwater, 21, sent 20 messages from his work cell phone
before the girl’s mother caught on and called Alaska state police, troopers
said.
“He was sending the text messages to her, and then deleting
them,” state police spokeswoman Beth Ipsen told the Daily News.
The calls took place over a 24-hour period in November in
the tiny village of Kobuk in northwestern Alaska, authorities said.
“I was drunk,”
Outwater, 21, told troopers, according to court documents obtained by the
Anchorage Daily News.
Outwater was never able to arrange an illicit meeting, and
his overtures were apparently confined to the cell phone screen, authorities
said.
“It’s solicitation only, so there was no physical contact,”
Ipsen said.
Troopers arrested Outwater on Dec. 19 on felony charges of
tampering with evidence and sexual assault of a minor — solicitation. He’s now
in custody at Anvil Mountain Correctional Center in Nome.
He had been working as a Kobuk Village police officer, a
low-level patrol job on the bottom rung of Alaska’s law enforcement hierarchy.
The job didn’t require him to be certified through a state
police academy, and he wasn’t allowed to carry a firearm as he policed the
villages’ 150 residents, Ipsen said.
Village officials refused to say whether Outwater was still
employed, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
Troopers and the Kotzebue District Attorney are still investigating,
but authorities don’t believe Outwater was contacting any other girls.
It’s not clear how he would have gotten the 12-year-old’s
phone number, but authorities don’t think it would have been difficult.
“It’s a very small village,” Ipsen said.
