Leechburg, Pennsylvania is a small borough several dozen miles from Pittsburgh, touting a little over 2,000 residents. But the town has been turned upside down after its police chief was charged with attempting to solicit sex from an undercover agent posing as a minor.
Police chief Michael Diebold posted online under the username “Kutecop4you” and advertised himself as a “dominate [sic] male police officer” searching for a “fun, discreet, sub playmate,” investigators allege. That’s when he reportedly caught the attention of a special agent for Pennsylvania’s attorney general’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations who posed as a 14-year-old girl and reached out to Diebold.
Despite knowing the fictitious girl’s age, the police chief attempted to meet with the supposed young girl, suggesting “everyone has to have a first time” and that she’ll have to “get me naked tomorrow,” according to the special agent. Instead, the New York Times reports, Diebold was arrested on Friday and is facing charges of unlawful contact with a minor and criminal attempt to commit involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
“Diebold admitted to being the individual who was communicating with the purported child during all the communications,” an affidavit explained, CNN reports. “Diebold admitted that he knew that sexual contact with a 14-year-old child was wrong and illegal and that his life was totally over.”
According to a lawyer for the police chief, Diebold plans to plead not guilty at a preliminary hearing scheduled for Jan. 16. But with Diebold already receiving media attention, his family is in despair over the chief’s alleged actions.
“I am broken, devastated, humiliated, and I was completely blindsided,” Diebold’s wife, Danielle Reinke Diebold, explained, CNN reports. “This is not who we knew. We knew a loving, caring father and husband and we are grieving the loss of that man.”
Diebold is a known figure in the Leechburg community. Last summer, he made local headlines when he lost a hand and part of a forearm after a firework exploded on him.