Harman player charged after on-court incident

April 10

By Edgar Kelley

Staff Writer

Jones

HARMAN — A Harman School basketball player is facing three felony charges after allegedly breaking an opposing player’s nose during a game in February. 

Gage Ketterman, 18, of Bowden, has been charged with malicious assault and two counts of attempted malicious assault. Ketterman was being held at Tygart Valley Regional Jail on a $12,500 property/surety bond, which was posted.

According to the criminal complaint, prepared by Corporal Charles S. Hartman of the Moorefield Detachment of the West Virginia State Police, officers received a call from the mother of a juvenile player on the Union High School boy’s basketball team. She said that, during a game on Feb. 26, her 17-year-old son’s nose was broken when he was “elbowed in the face by a male on the Harman team.”

The mother said her son had to be transported from the Union Educational Complex, in the Mount Storm area of Grant County, to Garrett Memorial Hospital for medical treatment after the game, the complaint states. She said her son bled “profusely” for better than four hours, had a broken nose, and a small laceration to the bridge of his nose/eye area, which made it hard for her son to breath, and he needed to see a specialist the following day.

The mother said Ketterman, who is 18, was the Harman player who broke her son’s nose, adding she watched the game video and “the actions of this boy were obviously intentional and he was trying to hurt people,” according to the complaint. 

Several video clips of the game in question were sent to Hartman, the complaint states. After reviewing the clips, Hartman wrote that in the first video, Ketterman “placed both his feet firmly on the floor, reared back and swung his elbow directly into the face of” the mother’s 17-year-old son.

According to the complaint, in the second video Ketterman is seen “swinging his elbow wildly again and striking the back of the head” of the same player, knocking him forward. In the third video, Ketterman is seen “again swinging his elbow wildly at the head of another Union player,” a 16 year-old juvenile. This blow hit the left shoulder of the player and glanced the back of his head, Hartman wrote.

The mother later told Hartman that her son’s nose “was broken nearer to the top of his brow, making surgery difficult,” the complaint states. Her son was told “he could play his remainder games if he wears a full face mask, which they had purchased, but said he probably would not because of him being apprehensive of further contact.”

She said the family was advised that surgery on her son’s nose “may be ‘invasive,’ would probably leave scarring and that the family had elected with their son to forego surgery and just live with a slightly crooked nose,'” according to the complaint. 

Warrants for the three charges against Ketterman were signed on March 25. Ketterman was booked into the Tygart Valley Regional Jail on Sunday, April 6.

Ketterman’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 22 in Grant County Magistrate Court.  

No. 1

Former pastor arrested, charged with soliciting a minor

Oct. 2

By Taylor McKinnie

Staff Writer

ELKINS — The former pastor of the Summit Church in Elkins was arrested Wednesday and faces a felony charge after allegedly soliciting a minor.

Kevin Curtis Jones, 33, is charged with one count of soliciting a minor via computer, a felony. He is currently being held at the Tygart Valley Regional Jail on a $50,000 cash-only bond set by Randolph County Magistrate Benjamin Shepler.

According to the criminal complaint, filed by Deputy and Task Force Officer D.A. Cale with the Barbour County Sheriff’s Office and the Mountain Region Drug And Violent Crime Task Force, on Wednesday, Cale assisted Cpl. C. Parks, also with the Barbour Sheriff’s Office, with a soliciting investigation involving Jones.

Parks told Cale he was “investigating Pastor Kevin Jones for soliciting a minor with a computer,” the complaint states. The alleged victim, who is no longer a juvenile, was an attending member of the Summit Church in Elkins. Cale applied for a search warrant in Randolph County to seize relevant cellular devices, flash drives, storage devices, computers, etc.

Also on Wednesday, Cale located Jones in an RV at the Smokey Bottom Camp Ground, off Route 33, the complaint states. A “large amount” of cellular devices and storage devices were seized. Cale also made contact with the alleged victim, who came out of the RV to speak with him.

The alleged victim stated that Jones was their pastor and that they recalled an event where they and other juveniles went to Jones’ house in Randolph County around Christmas of 2023, the complaint states. The alleged victim told Cale that Jones began communicating with them over the phone about being in a “clandestine relationship” with the alleged victim once they turned 18.

According to the complaint, Jones was “the pastor of Summit Church… where the (alleged) victim attends, making (Jones) a person of trust over the victim.” Cale writes that he explained to the alleged victim what solicitation of a minor via computer was defined as under West Virginia State Code, and then asked the alleged victim if they thought Jones had solicited them. The alleged victim said, “Yes.”

“It is evident that Pastor Kevin Jones used a communication device to contact the victim to solicit, entice, seduce or lure (them) into a clandestine relationship while he remained married and was a person of trust,” Cale writes in the complaint.