Evidence inmate saved from sex encounter helped lead to deputy’s charges: affidavit
Video surveillance footage from the Sedgwick County Jail showed a male detention deputy now charged with having illegal sexual contact with an inmate visiting her cell before she complained to authorities, according to a probable cause affidavit released last week by a Sedgwick County judge.
The video and employee work records provide key evidence in connection to the inmate’s claims that 40-year-old Tony LoSavio approached her and asked her to fondle his privates multiple times between Feb. 2 and May 1.
In many, if not all cases, the inmate complied with the requests, the affidavit says. The Eagle is not naming her because she is an alleged victim of a sex crime.
LoSavio’s defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. LoSavio is charged with eight counts of unlawful sexual relations with an inmate.
The Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation after the inmate complained in early May that LoSavio had been “harassing her for close to five months” whenever he worked in her pod, with conduct ranging from “inappropriate comments” to “physical contact,” according to the affidavit.
The illegal contact with the deputy began after he started calling her a lewd name that referenced an incident where she had looked at his crotch, the affidavit says the inmate told a detective who interviewed her.
During the last interaction before the inmate complained, on May 1, the jail’s surveillance cameras caught LoSavio at the inmate’s cell door ”making a gyrating motion with his hips” while she appeared to be in front of him, the affidavit says. That morning, LoSavio went to her cell door around 4:30 a.m. and banged on a food tray slot to wake her up while he was making rounds, according to the document.
When the encounter was over, LoSavio “appears to zip up his pants, then closes the (inmate’s cell) door,” the affidavit says the video shows.
In addition to her interview, the inmate gave investigators a piece of cloth she said she used to save some of LoSavio’s bodily fluids from the May 1 interaction, according to the affidavit.
When the detective interviewed LoSavio three days later, LoSavio admitted to letting the inmate touch him “through his pants while at her cell door” and perform a sexual act on him, the affidavit says. Employee records showed he worked in the pod where the inmate was housed eight times between Feb. 2 and May 1.
He was “on overtime” for five of those eight shifts, the affidavit says.
LoSavio is due in court for a preliminary hearing later this month, court records show. He has not yet entered a plea in the case.
This story was originally published June 10, 2021 at 11:38 AM.
