Youth coach kills self after child porn arrest
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A Westchester County assistant youth soccer coach who traveled to a small town outside Chicago with plans to distribute child pornography and have sex with young children killed himself after posting a high bond and returning to New York, authorities said Tuesday.
Suresh M. Manjanath, 45, of Tarrytown, N.Y., jumped to his death from a building in Jackson Heights about 1:30 a.m., Sunday — less than 32 hours after he was released from police custody in Illinois, New York City police and medical examiner said.
Manjanath, who volunteered with the Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow branch of AYSO, a national youth soccer program, was caught in an online sting, unaware the person he arranged to meet up with in the Midwest was actually an undercover investigator, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a news release.
Investigators with Madigan's office arrested Manjanath late May 27 in Channahon, a town of about 12,000 southwest of Chicago, and charged him with four felony counts of dissemination of child pornography.
Madigan said Manjanath was seen trading child porn images in an online chat room. An undercover investigator then had online contact with Manjanath, prompting an investigation that culminated with his arrest. At the time of his arrest, he had gone to a restaurant to meet with the undercover investigator he thought was the mother of two young children, authorities said.
The charges against Manjanath are not believed to have involved any AYSO player, said George Passantino, a California-based spokesman for the organization. Manjanath had been a volunteer with the group since 2010, both as an assistant coach and helping with the technological aspects of registering online for the program.
As a volunteer, Manjanath would have had to pass a background check and gone through "safe haven" training, Passantino said. Once AYSO, which lists Olympians and professional athletes Landon Donovan, Julie Foudy, Shannon Boxx and Alex Morgan as alumni of its program, learned of his arrest, Manjanath was suspended, Passantino said. His name and title of "registration tech czar" also has since been removed from the site.
Manjanath was booked at the Will County jail around 3 a.m. May 28 and released Friday around 6:15 p.m., jail records show.
Manjanath posted 10 percent of a $1 million bond. Because of his death, the charges are expected to be dismissed, said spokeswoman Maura Prossley of the Illinois Attorney General's Office.
No one answered the bell Tuesday afternoon at the second-floor unit of a North Broadway condominium where Manjanath lived with his wife and two children.
Madigan's office worked on the investigation with the Will County State's Attorney's Office and Channahon Police, which has a detective assigned to an Attorney General's task force that focuses on Internet crimes against children.
Manjanath's arrest follows the recent arrest of 70 people, including at least five from the Lower Hudson Valley, on child porn charges. Those arrests were prompted by the earlier arrest of ex-Mount Pleasant Police Chief Brian Fanelli on child porn charges.