SLT firefighter quits; remains in custody
By Kathryn Reed
Disgraced South Lake Tahoe fire Capt. Mark WyGant has resigned, making him no longer on the city’s payroll after Feb. 4. WyGant received one day of paid administrative leave.
WyGant is accused of possessing more than 5,000 child pornography images and 50 videos of child porn.
Mark WyGant
He remains in federal custody after being arrested Jan. 29.
A flash drive with the sexual images was found by a city employee and turned into authorities. The internal investigation led local law enforcement to believe the drive belonged to a member of the fire department. Then the FBI was brought in. WyGant was later identified as the suspect.
Images are explicit, including showing young girls having anal, vaginal and oral sex with men – but none of WyGant engaging in any acts. Lake Tahoe News has been told that no local children are believed to be in any of the images. According to the criminal complaint, WyGant admitted to filming at least one young girl.
The complaint lists WyGant’s address as Chico. The memorandum of understanding the city and firefighters are working under does not have a residency requirement. This is new as of last fall when contracts were being reworked. Prior to the new MOU, WyGant had been leasing a place in Tahoma. After the MOU was written he changed his residency to Chico. (The city agreed to remove the residency requirement because of case law that said this violated employees’ rights.)
WyGant has a court hearing scheduled for Feb. 13 in Sacramento.
Probably will lose any government work related pension if convicted.
Thank you Kae. :)
Well, that was an honorable thing for him to do.
Dog, although I agree with you 110%, I feel “honorable” is a word that is a label he couldn’t live up to with a hundred lives to rectify his despicable actions.
Resignation seems an odd decision since his lawyer probably expects to be paid. And firefighters may seem to be well paid by LTN standards, but I doubt if many criminal attorneys would agree.
Won’t he get a public defender? I guess we pay. He actually did the right thing.
5,000 pictures and dozens of videos? Maybe the City needs to look into the work load of that position. Who has that much time on their hands at work??
A very sad story about a creep in public service. The good news is that most of our Fire Department personnel are an amazing component of our community – always ready to respond to the community. They do an amazing job! This one sick fellow slipped through the cracks somehow – it happens, I guess. He does not represent the high caliber of Fire Fighters who serve our community, and for that I am am grateful!
The fact this was a person promoted to captain is a real problem that needs answers. The best thing that was done was letting the FBI handle this. Where was the termination after felony arrest action that should have been started before he resigned to prevent a retirement? Then there is the need for an audit of the computers he was using to see where this was being done on city property, and obviously there should be other arrests soon for the others involved.
It is probably a stretch to suggest this was being done on government computers. But should be checked
A flashdrive, which can be plugged into anything was the evidence.
Justice
I’m not aware of any test that could have helped the HR department know about his deep dark secret or if in what ways that secret eroded his abilities to test for Captain and obtain the position. He certainly brought disgrace X10 on the department, but I see no culpability whatsoever for the department unless you can pinpoint a how they would test for such a thing.
The word I heard is he was one smart dude.
Honorable? (Sneer)…give him some rope and an hour alone and let him do an ‘honorable’ thing.
Too bad WyGant didn’t have a Hispanic last name so Justice could make one of his racially inspired comments about illegals. I always find those amusing, albeit sad. Come on Justice, did you recently get a clue?
(Sorry, feeling a bit sarcastic this morning)