No charges in firehouse sex

Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker is expected to announce today that he will file no criminal charges against a former Spokane firefighter who admitted to having sex and taking explicit photographs of a 16-year-old girl at a fire station.

The 10 a.m. news conference follows months of outrage and speculation over whether former firefighter Daniel W. Ross will face charges for the Feb. 10 sexual encounter at a fire station in northwest Spokane. Digital photos taken of the encounter were deleted at the direction of Spokane police detectives.

“If we are going to charge exploitation, which is about the only one left to us, it involves pictures of a minor that are used to exploit the minor,” Tucker said. “If he kept the pictures and put them on the Internet, then he’s a pornographer and we can get him on exploitation. Without pictures, that would be a tough case.”

He added: “You can tell where this is going.”

Ross, 35, quit his $63,769-a-year firefighter job on March 8, a day before a departmental disciplinary hearing to discuss his sexual encounter with the girl in the furnace room of Fire Station No. 17.

Ross told investigators that he met the girl on the Internet and exchanged phone text messages before meeting face-to-face on Feb. 10, just hours after Ross’ pregnant wife and young daughter had left the station after watching TV coverage of the Winter Olympics.

Ross took pictures of the sexual act with the girl, whose boyfriend later called police to report an apparent rape at the fire station.

Spokane police Detectives Neil Gallion and Sgt. Joe Peterson responded, and Ross showed the detectives the images in an effort to prove the sex was consensual. The investigators then directed Ross to delete the photos from his camera.

Tucker said he won’t address today whether Gallion and Peterson should be charged. He’s left that duty to city prosecutors because he is a close friend of Peterson, and because the possible tampering with evidence charge would be a misdemeanor.

“They deleted it. They stopped it from being evidence,” Tucker said of Peterson and Gallion. “It might be looking like the detectives were tampering with evidence. But if they didn’t think a crime was committed, then how could they be tampering with evidence?

“What (Peterson and Gallion) were doing was preventing a crime from occurring, possibly. That’s what I’m thinking right now,” Tucker said.

City Prosecutor Howard Delaney did not return a telephone call on Wednesday.

After questioning Ross in the early hours of Feb. 11, Gallion and Peterson left the camera with him at the fire station. But Acting Police Chief Jim Nicks ordered the detectives to go back and retrieve the camera and place it in the evidence lockup.

Even with the camera in police possession, investigators sent their initial investigation to Tucker’s office without trying to obtain a search warrant to retrieve the deleted images.

While the age of consent in Washington is 16, Ross could have faced several charges, including communication with a minor for immoral purposes, sexual exploitation of a minor or possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

But Deputy Prosecutor Ed Hay ended the investigation in early March, concluding that that no criminal act had occurred.

Tucker said he then reopened the investigation and instructed detectives to try again to get the images from Ross’ camera.

“They didn’t think they had probable cause … for a search warrant,” Tucker said of the investigators. “I’m not agreeing with that point. From what I saw they had statements from the alleged victim and the alleged defendant. Both admitted that the sex happened. That’s one of the reasons I reopened the case to see if they could get the images off the camera.”

Eventually, Ross’ attorney, Christian Phelps, obtained consent from his client to allow a forensic expert to try to retrieve the deleted images. That effort failed, Tucker said, and investigators still don’t have the images.

“We don’t know what the guy’s intent was,” Tucker said of Ross. “It would be a tough exploitation case without knowing what he wanted to do with those pictures.”

But his previous actions may have been a clue.

According to documents from an internal city investigation, Ross previously sent pictures of himself engaged in sex acts with other women over the Internet while at work.

Prior to his quitting, Ross faced five counts of “conduct unbecoming an officer” and two additional counts of violating city policy by using the city’s computer network to access and transmit obscene, profane or pornographic material.

In an interview with Fire Department officials, Ross acknowledged using the city-owned computer at Station 13 to visit AdultFriendFinders.com, which is the Internet site where he eventually met the 16-year-old girl.

Ross told department officials that he didn’t intend to have sex with the girl on Feb. 10. “I was just going to meet her,” he said. “I hadn’t planned on it. I knew it was wrong.”

Ross could not be reached and his attorney, Phelps, did not return a call Wednesday seeking comment.