LEWISTON – A local man who tried to flee California with a 14-year-old girl he met over the Internet was sentenced Tuesday to nearly five years in prison.

Daniel Roger Fecteau, 49, was ordered to spend four years and eight months in a California prison after admitting he tried to get on a commercial airline with the girl.

“It’s less than I would have liked, but way more than the defense attorney argued for,” said Modesto police Detective Ray Coyle, who arrested Fecteau July 3. “They wanted a short county jail sentence with probation.”

Fecteau was convicted of child abduction, attempted lewd acts with a child, entering a dwelling with intent to commit a felony and sending harmful matter over the Internet.

Investigators said the fact that Fecteau was caught before boarding the plane may have helped him avoid a longer prison sentence.

Police found Fecteau and the girl at a Sacramento airport shortly before the pair was scheduled to fly to Maine. That was a day after the girl’s mother reported her missing from her Modesto home.

Investigators said Fecteau had flown to Sacramento days earlier and lured the girl to the airport after maintaining a relationship with her for months over the Web.

Police said the girl had lied to her relatives about where she was spending the night in order to meet Fecteau and fly back to Lewiston with him. The 14-year-old later told police the suspect had told her through computer conversations that he was 17.

The girl was not hurt during the ordeal and was later turned over to the custody of her parents.

Fecteau pleaded guilty in late October, a day before he was scheduled to stand trial. Coyle said the sentencing judge on Monday took into account the fact that Fecteau did not touch the girl and that he has no criminal record.

“The district attorney argued for the max, which would have been eight or nine years, and the judge obviously went somewhere in the middle,” Coyle said. “Considering all things, it’s really not a bad sentence for the people.”

Police in Lewiston joined the investigation soon after Fecteau was arrested. Investigators here said they found child pornography on Fecteau’s computer after they were given permission to seize and examine the machine.

Investigators said data on his computer also revealed he had been corresponding with young girls across the country and that he was keeping sexual photographs of some of them.

Fecteau could face charges from police in Lewiston or the federal government now that he has been sentenced in California.

Fecteau, an unemployed truck driver when he was arrested in Modesto, was a trained emergency medical technician who used to work locally for ACT Ambulance Service.

mlaflamme@sunjournal.com

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