South Carolina sex offender arrested at Canfield Fair
A ride operator at the Canfield Fair is in jail after being identified as a wanted sex offender out of South Carolina. The fugitive, identified as 30 year old Brandon Walsh is wanted on a warrant for criminal solicitation of a minor. An alert from the U.S. Marshals Service said the suspect was believed to be at the fair working for an amusement company. With a picture of Walsh, local authorities organized a search operation involving the Sheriffs Department, the Stat...
CANFIELD, Ohio - A ride operator at the Canfield Fair is in jail after being identified as a wanted sex offender out of South Carolina.
The fugitive, identified as 30 year old Brandon Walsh is wanted on a warrant for criminal solicitation of a minor. An alert from the U.S. Marshals Service said the suspect was believed to be at the fair working for an amusement company.
With a picture of Walsh, local authorities organized a search operation involving the Sheriffs Department, the State Highway Patrol, Canfield police and fair police department.
"We split up, two officers per aisle way and we went looking for him," said Major Billy Cappabianca of the Sheriffs Department.
The state patrol also had a description of Walsh's vehicle. "What we did is inform all of our troopers in the area and started looking for the vehicle. We stationed troopers at all the gates at the fairgrounds," Lt. Jerad Sutton of the Canfield Post of the State Patrol said.
After about an hour and a half, Walsh was located by a fair officer operating a ride called Catch-N-Air. He was arrested without incident but did manage to toss his cell phone into a port-a-john. The phone was recovered as possible evidence.
"In crimes like this, individuals that are cruising the internet looking for minors to have sex with or child pornography, a smart phone is just as powerful as a laptop computer or a desktop computer," said Cappabianca.
The Major said they will seek search warrants for the phone as well as a laptop recovered from Walsh's vehicle.
For a fair the size of Canfield Bates Amusements says it will hire up to twenty additional workers, but they say the background check on Walsh turned up no red flags.
Walsh is held in the Mahoning county jail pending extradition to South Carolina where he's accused of using Facebook Messenger to entice a 13 year old to meet for sex as well as send nude photographs.
