Alumnus opinion: In response to Tyler King
As I was sitting at my desk at WETM 18 in Elmira, I was on the phone with one of my good Oswego friends and colleagues. He called to say that one of our former professors was kicked out of his 20-man fantasy hockey league and that a spot had opened up for me to join. Just then, my WETM colleague sent me a photo with the caption “Do you know this man?” My friend then put it better than I ever could: Not as well as we thought.
On Monday, Nov. 2, Cameron Shutts of The Oswegonian broke the news that former SUNY Oswego broadcasting professor Tyler King had been arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) at the Lansdowne border crossing, just after the Thousand Islands Bridge, on Friday, Oct. 30. Officials say this was the result of a two-year investigation by the RCMP into the sexual exploitation of junior hockey players at King’s former team, the Okotoks Oilers. According to the RCMP, King was charged with three counts of luring a person under 18 years, sexual exploitation of a young person, and making child pornography.
I have had to write many stories that sound like the paragraph you just read. I have written stories about heinous people that have done heinous things. I have read police reports that go into gory detail of the materials that these monsters have been found in possession of and/or distributing. I have put mugshots of men and women like that onto social media posts as if I were putting them on a Wild West wanted poster. Never would I have imagined the next face on the poster to be King’s. When I read the caption of The Oswegonian’s post on Instagram Monday night, I thought it was a joke. King had always joked with us at WTOP, and I thought that this was simply the next joke.
But the dread set in. I read the caption over and over. I thought I had read it wrong. Upon showing it to my girlfriend, alumna, Elena Ehrhart, she informed me that I was not reading it wrong. I described the feeling in an email to the digital media and broadcasting department chair, Michael Riecke; The news “shot me in the chest and knocked me over backwards.”
King was a man I looked up to. This was a man I had had so many conversations with. This was a man who got me my first AHL media credentials. This was a man I asked to be on my WTOP show’s Senior Week special. This was a man who joked with me, a Leafs fan to a Habs fan. This was a man I put on my application as a reference for the job that I have right now. This was a man I had Instagram DMs with long after graduation. This was a man I consulted for the hockey show I do weekly. This was a man I was planning to invite to my wedding. This was a man I trusted.
This was a man. I thought so anyway. Turns out he was a monster, and he was hiding in plain sight.
