A Bloomington High School North custodian was arrested Thursday night for allegedly using his cell phone to record video in a girls’ locker room.
William Marrs, 36, faces preliminary charges of child exploitation and voyeurism after a group of female swimmers who practice at North discovered a cell phone recording them in the locker room, Bloomington Police Department Sgt. Dana Cole said.
Marrs has been suspended from Monroe County Community School Corporation according to an email to MCCSC parents and staff obtained by the IDS.
The girls gave the phone to their swim coach, who saw videos on the phone but told police he did not watch them in case they were inappropriate. The coach then put the phone in his pocket and spoke with parents about the issue, who called police at 7:45 p.m.
It’s unclear if Marrs has recorded the locker room before, but detectives believe this is not an isolated incident, Cole said. Police are continuing to investigate and will be talking to other swim teams to see if anyone noticed anything suspicious.
Marrs deleted the videos in question before turning the phone over to police, but Cole said detectives are working to access data on the phone to check for other deleted videos.
The swimmers are members of the Bloomington Swim Club Gold team, a club team made up of five girls and four boys. As the previous group’s practice was wrapping up, the girls went into the locker room where one of them noticed a suspicious trash bag in the corner of the common area, police said.
The bag had a small hole torn in the bottom with an iPhone camera lens sticking through it. When the girls went through the bag and found the iPhone, the screen was lit up and recording video, Cole said. The girls stopped the recording, which had been going for about 14 to 15 minutes.
After the girls gave the phone to their coach, a custodian came in, approached a parent and asked if anyone had found a phone. Parents directed him to the coach, who turned the device over to him. The coach told police he didn’t feel he had the authority to keep the phone from the custodian, who left the pool with the phone.
When detectives arrived they were able to locate the custodian based on a description from the coach that matched Marrs. He handed the phone over to detectives and was arrested.
The girls told detectives Marrs stopped them several weeks ago before they went into the locker room, telling them he needed to do something before they could go in. When detectives asked him about this, he said he was changing a soap dispenser.
Marrs initially told detectives his phone had been stolen from his cleaning cart and was missing for around 40 to 45 minutes. He said once he got the phone back, he didn’t check if it had been tampered with. He later changed his story and said he saw that there were videos on the phone but didn’t recognize them and deleted them.
He changed his story again, saying he set his phone down in the locker room while changing out paper towels. Later, he admitted to police he knowingly placed his phone in the trash bag to record video and said he watched the video before deleting it.
