Wonder Lake firefighter fired in October following department investigation

A firefighter was terminated by the Wonder Lake Fire Protection District last month following an internal investigation into allegations he sexually harassed another firefighter at the district.

In her Oct. 22 report to the board, the district’s attorney, Erika Thomas, wrote that her greater concern following the investigation was in the male firefighter’s attempts to conceal the alleged behavior.

The firefighter “went to great lengths to conceal his behavior and to paint (the female employee) in a bad light in order to get himself out of hot water,” Thomas said in the report.

The heavily redacted report, received through a Freedom of Information Act request, does not name the firefighter, but was delivered following a request for firefighter John Larsen’s records. District officials confirmed Larsen was dismissed following the investigation.

Reached by phone Monday, Larsen said “there were allegations, there is no evidence of it. The separation was based off of insubordination and violation of district policy.”

The unredacted portions of Thomas’ report do not address her conclusions regarding the allegations, focusing instead on the firefighter’s response to the investigation.

“This deceptive and, quite frankly, intentionally unccoperative behavior violated the District’s policies,” Thomas said in the report.

According to information in the report, a female employee initially told her department mentor she’d received numerous “inappropriate sexual Snapchats” over several days in August and the messages made her feel uncomfortable. The mentor then reported her concerns to Fire Chief Mike Weber and Deputy Chief Matthew Yegge. The male firefighter was placed on administrative leave while the woman’s report was investigated.

Thomas noted that many of the messages came through Snapchat, which either deletes messages automatically or within 24 hours, and that the app reports to the sender if a screenshot is taken. The female employee took a photo of some of the messages with another device, which is not reported via the app.

When the male firefighter was interviewed, he told Thomas that he had recorded some of the Snapchats on video to show a friend, as he was confused by them, that he had a copy of that on a separate flash drive, and that he had given a copy to his attorney. However when pressed, he could not give her the name of the attorney, just the law firm. Later, when Thomas asked the firefighter to forward her an email from his personal account, it was obvious “he was creating the email when it was screenshotted.”

As Thomas looked into the email more, “I stopped communicating with (him) because he was clearly being deceptive,” according to her report. He also could not produce the Snapchat video, she said.

This was the second investigation in 12 months where the district district’s attorney reported violations of the sexual harassment policy. A December 2023 summary report from Thomas detailed allegations that former Deputy Chief Chris Weber had violated the district’s sexual harassment policy. Weber resigned from the district the previous August.