Stephenville Fire Marshal Gary Nabors was arrested Thursday and charged with online solicitation of a minor, a second-degree felony, according to District Attorney Jason Cashon.
The charge is punishable with a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Bond was set Friday morning at $50,000, and Friday evening Nabors remained in Erath County jail with no attorney on record.
Cashon said Texas Ranger Danny Briley is leading the investigation with assistance from other agencies. He declined to name the other agencies, citing the ongoing investigation.
City Administrator Mark Kaiser said Nabors has been a city employee since 1979, first working as a building inspector, then in April 1986 he was promoted to fire marshal.
Texas Rangers arrested Nabors at his office, and city assets were secured, Kaiser said.
“He can’t get to his pickup, cell phone or his office,” Kaiser said. “We are cooperating with Texas Rangers.”
Kaiser said Nabors is divorced and has two children.
Cashon said, “There are constantly law enforcement people out there posing as minors. They develop a profile on the Internet, and it doesn’t take very long to engage an adult.”
The Brownwood Bulletin recently reported on the arrest of Harvey Curry, 60, who believed he was chatting online with a 12-year-old girl when he was actually engaged with Somervell County Sheriff’s investigator Tony Yocham.
Yocham had logged onto Yahoo Messenger as part of an investigation into online predators.
The Brownwood man was sending sexually graphic messages and photos of child pornography through an Internet instant messaging service, a Texas Ranger alleged in an affidavit for a search warrant.
It is not known if these two arrests stemmed from the same operation within the Somervell County Sheriff’s office. Calls to the office were not returned.
