Scott County officials arrest Charlestown man for child solicitation

Scott County Sheriff's officials arrested a Clark County man at a home in Austin on Thursday, August 15, where he planned to meet a 13-year-old girl. The planned encounter was a police undercover operation that resulted in the arrest of Kenneth L. Snyder, 47, of Clark Road in Charlestown on a child solicitation charge.

According to Sheriff Jerry Goodin, the investigation began on August 7. Officers from the Scott County Sheriff's Office were involved. The focus was on a suspected sex offender from Clark County who made contact with a person he believed to be a teenager from Scott County. The communication was of a sexual nature, the sheriff said.

According to the court's probable cause affidavit, Scott County Sheriff's Deputy Donovan McCutcheon, who has received training from the National Criminal Justice Training Center in communicating with child predators and is a member of the Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, responded to an anonymous online request for a relationship. The officer responded posing as a teenager named “Sierra.”

Snyder and McCutcheon, in the role of the undercover person “Sierra,” texted each other several times a day over the next few days, with the conversations led by Snyder and becoming increasingly sexually explicit, court documents show.

Snyder arranged to meet “Sierra” at her “home” on Broadway Street in Austin on the evening of Aug. 15, “when her mother would not be home.” A plainclothes Austin Reserve Police officer was at the door, acting as an undercover officer for the teenage Sierra, court documents say.

When Snyder arrived at the home to meet with the person he believed to be the juvenile, officers arrested him. He was booked into the Scott County Jail at 9:56 p.m. and charged with solicitation of sexual intercourse with a child, a Level 4 felony.

He made his first appearance before Scott Circuit Court Judge Jason Mount on Monday, August 19. Mount posted Snyder's bail of $65,000 in cash. Snyder remained in custody as of the Times' press time.