See the update at the end of this post about the charges prosecutors have leveled against Wikstrom and the punishment the veteran local baseball coach faces with a conviction.
ORIGINAL POST, JUNE 13, 9:47 A.M.: Another high school baseball coach in Anaheim has been accused of using social media to get his rocks off with unsuspecting boy players. Katella High School's Edwin Alan Wikstrom of Anaheim was arrested while coaching a baseball game in Lakewood. The charge: suspicion of sending sexually explicit text messages to minors.
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Police received a report Monday that the volunteer coach was sending the messages to minor players on Katella High's team, according to a statement from Sgt. Bob Dunn, the Anaheim department's spokesman.
Because Wikstrom has been a longtime coach throughout Southern California, there are fears he may have preyed on other boys, Dunn added.
That was the same fear Irvine Police expressed months earlier about another former part-time baseball coach, Zachary Joshua Reeder. The 30-year-old Orange resident, who taught at all-boys Catholic Service High School in Anaheim and taught and/or coached at Irvine's Beckman and Mission Viejo's Capistrano Valley high schools, is accused as posing as a girl on Facebook to lure underage boys.
Zachary Joshua Reeder, Teacher-Coach Alleged to Pose as Girl to Lure Boys, to be Arraigned
Wikstrom was held at the Anaheim city jail in lieu of $100,000 bail. Anyone with information that can help in the investigation of him is asked to call Orange County Crimestroppers at 855.TIP.OCCS.
UPDATE, JUNE 13, 10:26 A.M.: 53-year-old Wikstrom is charged with two felony counts of distributing pornography to a minor and faces up to three years and eight months in state prison with a conviction, according to an Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) statement on today's scheduled arraignment of him.
“Between 2011 and 2013, Wikstrom is accused of sending sexually explicit text messages on multiple occasions to two minor boys, ages 16 and 17, whom he met through his volunteer coaching job at Katella High School in Anaheim,” the OCDA states. “A parent of one of the victims discovered the text messages and reported the case to the Anaheim Police Department (APD), who investigated this case.”
Most troubling to police and prosecutors is Wikstrom has been a baseball coach in Southern California for 30 years, including stints with Katella High, East Anaheim Little League and in Lakewood.
Besides the Crimestoppers number provided in the original post, anyone with information is asked by the OCDA to contact Supervising District Attorney Investigator Paul Carvo at 714.347.8794.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.