The stunned wife of a US police chief who was arrested for soliciting sex with a child says her family’s lives “have been completely shattered”.<\/p>\n
Michael William Diebold, who ran the three-man police force in Leechburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested on Friday.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old allegedly sent explicit texts and photos with a person he believed was 14, but it was a police sting.<\/p>\n
His wife apologised to the public on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I have never hurt so bad in all my life,” Danielle Reinke Diebold said in a statement to KDKA News.<\/p>\n
She described her husband as the “first man ever in my life who never made me question, never gave me a gut feeling, never a bad instinct or sign and we were even in the process of planning to extend our family”.<\/p>\n
“This is not who we knew. We knew a loving, caring father and husband and we are grieving the loss of that man,” she added.<\/p>\n
According to Pennsylvania state prosecutors, Mr Diebold was arrested on Friday after trying to meet an undercover officer who was posing online as a teenager.<\/p>\n
The criminal complaint says that Mr Diebold had been contacted by the bogus teen after posting an advert in which he stated he was a “full-time police officer”.<\/p>\n
Identifying himself as “kutecop4you”, Mr Diebold wrote: “I am a dom male that is also employed as a full time police officer. I hope that does not scare you off.”<\/p>\n
After the undercover agent claimed in the text exchange to be a 14-year-old girl, Mr Diebold allegedly responded: “Everyone has to have a first time.”<\/p>\n
The mayor of Leechburg, a borough of about 2,000 people 35 miles (55km) north-east of Pittsburgh, said the chief has been suspended without pay.<\/p>\n
Over the summer, Mr Diebold was interviewed on national news, after he was maimed in a fireworks accident at the town’s annual carnival.<\/p>\n
Despite the injury, which led to the amputation of an arm, he and his fiancee married 18 days later.<\/p>\n
The town raised thousands of dollars to help his recovery, and local news crews filmed his wedding.<\/p>\n
He is now charged with unlawful contact with a minor and criminal attempt to commit involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"