Oregon State pitcher Luke Heimlich, one of the top MLB pitching prospects in the country, pleaded guilty to a single count of molesting a six-year-old family member when he was a teenager.
Heimlich’s criminal history was discovered just before the start of the NCAA baseball tournament super regionals, where his team is top ranked.
Heimlich, 21, from Puyallup, Washington, who is projected to be an early-round pick in this years MLB draft, was revealed to be a sex offender after he failed update his registration status in April.
The sex offender status arises from a 2012 incident, when Heimlich, who was 15-years-old at the time, admitted to molesting a six-year-old relative in his Puyallup bedroom.
Prosecutors initially charged Heimlich with two counts of molestation for incidents between September 2009 and September 2010, and between September 2011 to December 2011.
via The Oregonian:
A Benton County sheriff’s sergeant, on a sweep to track down sex offenders who let their registrations lapse, located one at Gill Coliseum, the heart of Oregon State’s bucolic campus. It was Luke Heimlich, the ace left-hander who statistically is the nation’s best pitcher and is among the top prospects in next week’s Major League Baseball draft.
As a teenager, Heimlich pleaded guilty to a single charge of sexually molesting a 6-year-old female family member. Heimlich registered as a sex offender in Benton County after arriving at Oregon State. When he was cited in April for missing an annual update, it put the case in Oregon court records for the first time.
OSU’s top pitcher was 15 years old when the crime occurred in his family’s home in Puyallup, Washington, according to court documents obtained last week by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request. Juvenile court records in Washington, unlike in Oregon, are not automatically confidential.
Neither Heimlich nor OSU baseball coach Pat Casey commented on the matter.
Heimlich was ordered to register as a Level 1 sex offender, which in the state of Washington, characterizes offenders as having “the lowest possible risk to the community and their likelihood to re-offend is considered minimal.”
Heimlich is the ace pitcher on Oregon State’s top-ranked baseball team, with an 11-1 record and a 0.76 ERA.
