Ellwood City man arrested after Amish kids' alert

Staff report

Mercer, Pa.

A criminal complaint filed Friday against a Lawrence County man stems from an October incident when he tried to call out to children on a playground from a nearby outhouse.

Lucas Avery Klobetanz, 38, of Ellwood City, was arraigned Friday on a charge of luring a child into a motor vehicle or structure. He was committed to the Mercer County Jail on a secured bond, a Pennsylvania State Police release said.

According to the report, Klobetanz was seen sitting in his vehicle last Oct. 3 for about 45 minutes near Ligo Amish School on Leesburg Station Road in Wilmington Township while young students played outside of the school building.

Then he left his vehicle and went to a boy’s outhouse at the school where he remained inside for several minutes while children continued to play. He then began to call out for children to enter the outhouse, the release said, and that is when several children alerted an adult male at a nearby residence. That man confronted Klobetanz, who said he had eaten some bad food and had to use the outhouse, the release said.

When questioned why he was calling out to the children, Klobetanz said he had dropped the toilet paper and wanted help in picking it up. A separate, similar incident happened on the same date hours before at an Amish school in Lawrence County with a male of similar description in an outhouse.

In the Lawrence County case, the teacher took all the kids inside and locked the school door. No charges have been filed in that case.

Interviews have been conducted over the past few months before Klobetanz’s arrest, the report says.