A plea day has been set for a Kosciusko police officer who has been charged with five felonies.
Darren A. Cawthorn, 21, was recently arrested by the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, located in Florida, and charged with three counts of transmitting harmful information to minors, one count of using a computer to seduce, solicit or lure a child who is misrepresenting their age, and one count of using a two-way device to facilitate a felony.
He will go before Judge Kelvin C. Wells in a Florida court on June 20 to plead either guilty or not guilty for the five charges.
Walton County Sheriff’s Office issued a warrant for Cawthorn’s arrest earlier this month, and he was taken into custody on May 5 by Attala County Sheriff’s deputies and transported to Florida.
According to a spokesperson with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, Cawthorn is being charged there because the victim resides in the Florida county.
Cawthorn was officially charged with the felonies on May 13.
A judge set Cawthorn’s bail at $25,000. He bonded out Monday afternoon.
Cawthorn had no prior criminal history and underwent several background checks before becoming a police officer at the Kosciusko department. According to Police Chief RJ Adams, Cawthorn’s status is considered as on leave at the department.
Cawthorn has been a certified police officer with the Kosciusko Police Department since March.
According to a spokesperson at the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, the incident in which Cawthorn is charged occurred during a two-week span from December 2020 to January 2021, and the communication was through a social media platform. Cawthorn was 19 when the communication started. The victim was 14 at the time but said she was 16, according to the Walton County Sheriff’s Office.
The victim’s guardians reported multiple communications on the social media platform to the Sheriff’s Office. After an investigation, Cawthorn was identified as one of the people who chatted with the victim on the social media platform.
It took the Sheriff’s Office about a year of research to identify the parties and to collect information from the social media platform.
