By: Joe Strupp Just a day after revealing one of its best-loved photographers had been arrested in an altercation with police in which he asked to be shot, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans reports that a sportswriter was arrested for allegedly trying to meet a 15-year-old girl for sex via the Internet.
William D. Kalec, a Baton Rouge-based sportswriter for the paper, was taken into custody Wednesday in nearby Kenner, La., inside an apartment where he had expected to meet a teen girl, the paper reported.
Instead of meeting a young girl, the paper reported Thursday, Kalec, 27, was met by investigators who charged him with computer-aided solicitation for sexual purposes. Police said Kalec, who had covered LSU sports for the paper, was online late Tuesday when he contacted a person he believed to be a 15-year-old and engaged in "sexually explicit communication."
Kalec was actually online with Kenner Police Detective Robert McGraw, the paper reported. If convicted, he would be required to register as a sex offender and face a mandatory two-year prison term. Kalec remained in custody Wednesday.
He graduated from Penn State University in 2002.
Kalec's arrest occurred a day after photographer John McCusker was taken into custody in New Orleans by police after driving erratically and eventually hitting parked cars. He pinned an officer with his car against another car and shouted at police to shoot him. It was later revealed he had been frustrated because he could not pay to repair his home that had been damaged in Hurricane Katrina, and still suffered from trauma based on experiencing and covering the aftermath of the hurricane.
In both cases, the newspaper's account of the incidents did not identify the subjects as Times-Picayune employees in the headline or the lead. The story about McCusker noted his ties to the newspaper in the second paragraph, while the Kalec story mentioned his employment in the fourth graph.
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