Three men affiliated with a small-town fire department north of Dallas were arrested Thursday on felony child sex abuse charges after Texas Rangers investigators determined they had each targeted the same 16-year-old junior firefighter, the New York Post reported. One of the accused had been named Firefighter of the Year and promoted to lieutenant during the period the abuse allegedly took place.
David Yosimar Perez-Glass, Dalton Joe McCaslin, and Joshua Todd Ryals, all connected to the Howe Fire Department in Grayson County, were booked into the Grayson County Jail. Perez-Glass and McCaslin each face three counts of sexual assault of a child. Ryals was charged with two counts of indecency with a child involving sexual contact.
The victim was a teenage girl who began volunteering at the Howe Fire Department in January 2022. Court documents describe a pattern of abuse that started almost immediately and involved all three men over a span of months, carried out inside the fire station, at a private apartment, and under threat of violence.
Complaints filed in the case state that Perez-Glass began harassing the girl within her first month at the department. The behavior escalated during times the two were alone at the station.
Court documents describe how Perez-Glass's conduct turned physical:
"Perez's behavior scared her, and it eventually led to him hugging, grabbing her, and throwing her onto the sofa."
The victim told investigators she "did not like what he was doing to her." Over the course of roughly a year, Perez-Glass allegedly assaulted her more than 20 times orally and had intercourse with her fewer than 10 times. He repeatedly threatened to rape her, kill her, and "do things to her parents" if she ever reported what was happening.
During that same window, Perez-Glass was named Firefighter of the Year and promoted to lieutenant at the Howe Fire Department, accolades handed to a man who, if the charges hold, was systematically preying on a child volunteer under his supervision.
The abuse allegedly stopped only when the girl turned 17, which Texas law treats as the age of consent. Court documents indicate Perez-Glass no longer wanted to continue the relationship once the victim reached what the filings call the "legal age." That detail alone tells you something about the nature of the conduct: it ended not because of remorse, but because the legal risk changed.
Court documents describe McCaslin's involvement as a sexual relationship with the girl that began in December 2022. The filings use the word "consensual", a term that carries no legal weight when one party is 16 and the other is an adult in a position of authority. The case underscores a grim reality in child exploitation cases: trusted figures in positions of public respect can use that trust as a weapon.
The complaint alleges that at least one private interaction between McCaslin and the girl occurred at an apartment in Van Alstyne while another roommate was asleep. McCaslin, like Perez-Glass, faces three counts of sexual assault of a child.
The third defendant, Joshua Todd Ryals, was also affiliated with the Howe Fire Department and separately worked with the Melissa Fire Department. Court documents state that Ryals admitted to inappropriate contact with the victim while the two were alone at the Howe Fire Station.
Ryals resigned from the Melissa Fire Department the week before his arrest. That timing raises obvious questions about what he knew was coming. Just weeks earlier, on March 16, he had been honored as Paramedic of the Year by the same department, Fox 4 News reported.
So within a matter of weeks, Ryals went from collecting an award to facing two felony counts of indecency with a child involving sexual contact. The Melissa Fire Department's public recognition of Ryals, so close to his arrest, is an uncomfortable reminder that credentials and commendations mean nothing when the people holding them are allegedly committing crimes behind closed doors.
The timeline laid out in court documents is damning in its scope. The girl arrived at the Howe Fire Department as a volunteer in January 2022. Within weeks, one of the men allegedly began harassing her. By December of that year, a second man had allegedly initiated a sexual relationship with her. A third man allegedly admitted to contact with her at the station as well.
Three adult men. One child. The same fire station.
That concentration of alleged abuse raises questions that go beyond the individual defendants. How did a 16-year-old volunteer end up repeatedly alone with adult firefighters at the station? What safeguards, if any, existed for junior volunteers? Did anyone at the department observe warning signs and fail to act? The court filings made public so far do not answer those questions. But they need answering.
Grayson County, situated along the Texas-Oklahoma border, is no stranger to law enforcement activity. The county made national headlines years ago when country singer Randy Travis was arrested there on DWI and retaliation charges, part of a string of legal troubles in 2012. But the charges against these three firefighters are of an entirely different magnitude, felony accusations involving the exploitation of a minor entrusted to their care.
The case fits a broader and deeply troubling pattern of public figures and authority figures facing serious criminal allegations. Arrest warrants for child abuse have recently made headlines in cases involving individuals whose public reputations masked alleged private conduct. And the phenomenon is not limited to any one profession or community, new criminal charges against once-admired public figures have become a recurring feature of the news cycle.
What sets this case apart is the sheer brazenness of the alleged conduct. These were not strangers operating in the shadows. They were uniformed public servants, men entrusted with protecting their community, who allegedly used the fire station itself as the setting for their crimes. One of them was promoted and decorated while the abuse was reportedly ongoing.
All three men have been booked into the Grayson County Jail. No attorneys for any of the defendants have been publicly identified. The Texas Rangers led the investigation, though the specific office that filed the charges has not been disclosed in available court records.
The charges are serious. Sexual assault of a child is a second-degree felony in Texas, carrying a potential sentence of two to 20 years. If any of the defendants are found to have been in a position of trust or authority over the victim, and a fire department lieutenant supervising a junior volunteer would seem to qualify, sentencing enhancements could apply.
The victim, who endured what court documents describe as months of abuse, threats, and intimidation beginning when she was just 16, will now have to navigate the criminal justice process. She came to the Howe Fire Department to serve her community. The adults who were supposed to mentor her allegedly did the opposite.
Communities hand firefighters their trust along with their badges. When that trust is weaponized against a child, the justice system owes that child, and every family that sends a teenager to volunteer, a full and unsparing accounting.
