Florida Coach Sent Nude Pics to Student: Police

That's Colby Erskine who used to be a high school football coach picked up by deputies

after he's accused of sending naked photos to a student.

I go through the allegations and where this coach's career stands now.

Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Antonette Levy.

Colby Erskine was a high school football coach in central Florida.

Was is the key word there. He lost his job after he was arrested on felony charges.

The allegation that he was soliciting a minor, sending her naked photos of himself over Instagram

and trying to get her to meet up with him. Now, I'm going to get into the specifics of the

allegations here shortly and let me warn you, the Ick factor is really high here.

Erskine had been working as a coach at Mount Dora High School in Lake County in the greater

Orlando area until his arrest. The charges he faces stem from incidents that police say happened

with a student in Broward County in the greater Miami area where Erskine had once worked as a

coach at South Plantation High School. Deputies in Seminole County pulled over Erskine on February 5th

on an active warrant.

Thank you for all of them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Scottie.

I know. I was like going as slow as I can. I'm like, I'm going one mile an hour. It's still

green. It's still green.

It's still green.

Okay.

I know. I was like, all these cars are waiting. Come on. Come on. Turn red.

You can hug Debbie.

Oh, that's what I'm talking about. Look at that.

Oh, that's like curvy.

You can fit a piece of paper through there.

Look at that.

All right. I got to turn this in soon.

Please.

Easily back up right into that.

So why are the cops surrounding Colby Erskine's car?

Well, a probable cause of a David lays out the details that police are alleging.

The affidavit states, the minor victim advised at the end of the school year, May 2024,

a former teacher at South Plantation High School, who she identified as Colby Erskine here in referred to as Erskine,

began following her on Instagram.

The minor victim stated the initial interaction was what she described as a student slash teacher conversation over several months of off and on communication.

The minor victim advised the conversations became sexual in nature.

The minor victim stated she received naked pictures from Erskine during the last couple of months.

The minor victim advised the only source of communication between her and Erskine was through Instagram.

The minor victim provided law enforcement with Erskine's Instagram username Colby Erskine.

The minor victim also advised that she had never been alone with Erskine nor has she had sexual or physical contact with him.

Police started investigating and they say they actually found three Instagram accounts used by Colby Erskine.

One just had his name Colby Erskine.

Then there was a second Colby underscore 442 and the third Colby Erskine with an E on the end.

Police got warrants and they started going through the accounts.

The affidavit continues, the parent provided a video of multiple pictures sent by Erskine to the minor victims Apple iPhone 13 cellular phone herein referred to as the device.

The minor victim and the parent provided written consent to search related to media on her device.

The minor victim surrendered her cellular phone to law enforcement for a digital forensic examination.

A property receipt was signed to maintain the chain of custody.

The father of the victim provided this photo to WPLG 10 TV.

The dad said Erskine sent this photo to his daughter in it.

Erskine stands in front of a mirror as you can see he's holding up a phone and the caption says almost there.

Erskine is naked from the waist down, but the photo is blacked out below the waist.

The affidavit goes on to say the minor victim and 11th grade high school students stated that Erskine is known to her as a former teacher from her high school where she is currently enrolled.

The minor victim advised that she had little to no contact with Erskine while attending school because he was not one of her scheduled instructors.

However, she did disclose that Erskine was the math teacher for her 17 year old sister and the football coach for her brother.

The minor victim stated that she received a follow request from Erskine on Instagram at the end of the previous year.

The minor victim described her initial online communications with Erskine as a teacher would interact with a student.

However, the communications transition to a peer to peer type interaction.

Erskine would give her advice about relationships with boys and comment on her physical appearance.

The minor victim mentioned that Erskine would send her pictures of clocks and calendars counting down to her 18th birthday.

Erskine also asked her to keep their conversations a secret.

So after police conducted their investigation, they got warrants for Erskine's Instagram and Apple ID accounts.

They gathered enough evidence to make an arrest now back to the video from February 5th.

Those deputies are surrounding Erskine's car and they are very interested in the location of his cell phone.

All right, I got to turn this in soon.

Please be easily back up right into that.

Can I take a picture of that?

Can I take a picture of that?

Sure.

Yeah.

I have my phone.

Well, I was like, then I flashed last night.

Okay.

You don't start clearing this.

We can move this car in the parking lot right here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who's moving this car?

What?

Yeah.

Can you start following up there?

Yeah.

Okay.

What?

For somebody?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, I got it.

Okay.

Go on, Hunter.

Okay.

All right, I'm going to wait for the marked car to come up here.

Now, here's another angle from another deputies body-worn camera.

They actually blocked in Erskine's car.

Oh.

Sarah.

I was like, that's a very long green light.

I was like going as close as I can.

I'm like, I'm going one mile an hour.

It's so great.

The longest green light ever.

It's cycle back.

Come on.

I know.

I was like, all these cars are waiting.

Come on.

Come on, turn the red.

I was like, well, nothing else.

We're just going to WC.

Go go for it.

You can not get me.

Green light.

Oh, that's like perfect.

You can get these papers or this.

You can put a piece of paper through there.

A short time later, a deputy arrives at the sheriff's office with Colby Erskine.

He's in the back of the cruiser and you'll see.

He doesn't have anything to say.

All right.

I'm going to step down.

All right.

I'm going to step up here under the cover.

I just have a seat right here.

Colby Erskine sat at the picnic table at the sheriff's office for a short time.

A deputy stood near him, standing watch to ensure that he doesn't try to go anywhere and that he's safe.

Erskine, of course, is in their custody and they're responsible for him.

So I'd like to bring in Mark Weaver.

He works as a special prosecutor in the state of Ohio and also sits as a judge sometimes and has handled many cases involving allegations of teachers,

behaviors very badly and coaches, which is specifically why I reached out to you, Mark.

Thanks for coming back on your another creepy coach slash teacher allegation.

Yes.

It seems like we could do this all the time.

It's rather troubling if you think about it.

It is super troubling and it's kind of making me think like I'm thinking back to like when I was in high school.

I mean, think back to when you were in high school.

And I'm thinking to myself, my God, like we didn't have cell phones back then, right, to do this.

But I'm thinking to myself, is this just more prevalent now or our cell phones just making it more, is it more easy?

Is it easier for people, the cops to catch these people are the kids becoming more aware that, hey, this is creepy.

If my coach is reaching out to me or acting a little flirty with me, it's not really appropriate.

Maybe there's more awareness about this stuff. What do you think the change is?

Well, sin and sexual depravity have been with us since the very beginning, of course.

But what's different, you mentioned some of the points, is the ability to talk to a child without the parents knowing.

So I played lacrosse in high school. If my coach had wanted to reach me outside of practice, he would have had to call my house.

And if he'd called my house, anybody could have picked up my mother, my sister, me, whoever.

And it would have been really weird to talk to him outside of the school or the coach and the playing field setting.

Now, with social media, students will often look for their teachers on Instagram or TikTok, some of these other platforms.

And then they can talk to one another, an Instagram, which I believe was the platform that was used in this crime, allows vanishing messages.

They really don't go away, spoiler alert.

We can still find them as a prosecutor. I can assure you we can still find them. But to the child, it looks like this is something that's easily hidden.

So the mechanism of allowing this sexual depravity has increased over the years.

The mechanisms have certainly increased. And now we have this digital footprint, digital trail.

What's so disturbing to me is this guy, according to the police, he's an incidental proving guilty, but he had three accounts that he was using.

And he is the person who reached out to the student, he reached out to her.

And so she accepted the request or whatever the follow request. And then she said, you know, everything according to what she told the police started with just normal teacher coach,

you know, interaction. But I mean, let's face facts, a teacher or a coach really shouldn't and a teenage girl may not realize this.

But they shouldn't be reaching out to follow you on Instagram.

Yeah, it's almost like the coach is acting like a juvenile here. We expect juveniles, teens, children to make dumb mistakes, their brains are not fully developed yet.

This guy was 39 years old, his brain is fully developed. I was a coach, my son's lacrosse team.

If I had something to say, one of the players, I said it right on the field where other people could hear it.

Now, if I wanted to say something to him that was a little sensitive, I might pull him aside, but I'm 10 feet away from the parents or from the other players, because I want to respect the fact that I shouldn't be interacting with a child without other people being aware of it.

Most certainly, also what's so concerning to me is the fact that he had three Instagram accounts.

Who needs three Instagram accounts? One's like Colby Erskin, his name, and then there's Erskine with an E on the end, and then one has some numbers after it.

Why on earth does he need three Instagram accounts? And is, do you think the police, you know, is this just like an initial charge?

Are they going to be combing through these accounts to look to see if there are other victims?

This goes back to my point that he's acting more like a child. Many teens have what they call a thin Instagram fake Instagram account where they can talk to their friends in a way that's very unencumbered.

So they have that, you know, Mary Smith Instagram that her parents and grandparents can see, and it's all very tame.

And then there's some series of numbers and letters that her friends all have access to fake Instagram, and so it sounds like he's trying to do the same thing.

He has one where he puts on perhaps the appearance of a respectable coach and teacher, and the other one where he's reaching out to children and trying to involve them in sexual activity.

You know, it's so the Ick factor here, Mark is so off the charts, and now we're actually getting a look at one of the photographs that he is alleged to have sent to a student.

And I'm just flabbergasted. Let's put that up on the screen. This shows him Colby Erskin holding up a phone. He's in front of a mirror, and it says almost there, and it's blacked out because it's showing his private parts.

And so there is a father of a victim here who shared this photo with a TV station WPLG channel 10 in Miami.

And I mean, he was so outraged, he's doing a news interview about this, and this is why I'm wondering, okay, if he's doing this with, if he's accused of doing this with one student, there may be more out there.

You look at this photo. I mean, this, this is bold. This student said, it sounds like it started out as like, you know, with what they're trying to build the cases.

He started out with like grooming her. It was all normal at first, what, you know, quote unquote normal. There's nothing normal about reaching out to students on Instagram, in my opinion.

But he, he, it starts out just about school, and then obviously you want to see something, you know, it escalates and that, and then we get to this.

I mean, my God, you see this. So mark your thoughts as a prosecutor who's handled cases like this on this photo.

Yeah, I'm here as a prosecutor, not a cultural critic, right? A cultural critic might say, what are you doing? Who does this? Even if you're sending it to an adult female, who does this?

This just seems like really poor, poor judgment. When, when you do it to a child, it's more than poor judgment. It's a crime. And that photo, I'm going to call it a guarantee that this case will not go to trial.

No defense lawyer wants to have the jury see a blown up phone core photo of that put on an easel right in front of them for the entire opening statement of the prosecution.

And they don't blur it. A trial, we don't blur things. A trial of the jury sees exactly whatever the image was. And so the, the evidence here appears to be very strong.

This will likely, please, I think it's two third degree foundies. He won't go to prison for life. There wasn't any sexual contact. It doesn't make it much better. It's just a different kind of a crime.

So the photo that we saw that kind of gross, what were you thinking photo to me is the guarantee that this thing will not go to trial because no defense lawyer would want it to.

So Mark, you, you don't think this case will ever go to trial. But what I think is interesting about this is just the amount of evidence in these cases, we see this that there are just basically mountains of evidence, especially electronic evidence in these cases, because you're talking over Instagram.

It's a social media platform. So there's a digital footprint. There's a record of everything, even if you think you're using a vanishing message, which maybe this coach believed the vanishing message feature made everything vanish, which it didn't, but I want to put this part of the affidavit up on the screen.

It says, eventually, the communications became sexual in nature. The minor victim described one exchange where Erskin made a comment about his wife's genitalia and another message, Erskin said, do you want to see stuff?

And what she believed was a reference to viewing sexually explicit content, the minor victim believed that Erskin wanted to exchange nude images and encouraged her to send images of herself.

The minor victim stated Erskin asked her if she would be attending one of the football games at high school, and that he is always willing to drive down to the from the Orlando area and give her rides back from home from the games accompanied

with the winking emoji. At one point, Erskin attempted to contact her via a video call. However, she believed Erskin's intent for the call was sexually motivated and therefore refused to interact with him on a live video connection.

She later received an image of an exposed genital part from Erskin's Instagram account.

The minor victim stated that Erskin's images and messages would disappear after viewing the minor victim described an Instagram feature called vanishing mode where images, videos and other direct messages would disappear after being viewed.

So there he believed or I guess he believed that these things would disappear, but it sounds like essentially because he is charged with solicitation of a minor.

He's using the winking emoji like, hey, I'll come down and get you. This is the allegation. This was potentially going to escalate to sexual contact. That's the what's being implied here in the Safa David.

Yeah, this is just one or two meetings away from a rape. It's pretty clear that's what he was moving up towards.

Ironically, the one thing the girl refused to do, which was the live video connection, that's the one thing that wouldn't be preserved when you when you're live streaming with somebody that doesn't get preserved.

But nearly everything else does. Every time we use our phones, there's records being made second by second of who's doing what and where you are when you do it. As a result, there's so much evidence.

It's overwhelming. There's going to be a plea agreement. This guy's going to agree to four or five years in prison and he'll go serve it. He'll be a sex offender and the registration less after that.

But do you believe, Mark, if they comb through the Instagram account that they will find more there there? Do you think that there will be other victims or do you think that this is?

Is this potentially just one victim the first time? I mean, we don't know, but what do you think? And after seeing all of these stories about this guy are other people calling in and saying, hey, I had a similar experience.

That's likely to happen when prosecutors get together, we talk about this and we acknowledge that nearly every sex offender that we prosecute has more than one victim.

It's just rare to have somebody who's only done this once. He'll occasionally get a one off like that. But this man for all we know, the computer records are going to show perhaps other evidence of other victims.

They'll begin pulling the threads and finding out who else is out there. As you mentioned, it's in the news. So other parents who are now starting to remember some odd conversation they had he had with their daughter.

I would say the investigation is not over, but we only can talk about the evidence that we know for sure. And there's more than enough for conviction here.

This was an arrest on a warrant. So at some point this will go before a grand jury.

So this was an initial arrest on a warrant on two charges. As a prosecutor, do you anticipate more charges at grand jury?

Yeah, the detectives do have no doubt been gathering other evidence. It's not difficult to meet the probable cost standard at grand jury with what the evidence is now.

If there are other things, this grand jury will hear it. A grand jury can be an investigating body. Sometimes we'll go to a grand jury and begin showing them evidence and say we're going to come back later with requests for more charges.

Or you can hand up indictments now. And then later as you find more charges, supersede that indictment with a new indictment. A couple of different ways to do it. Either way, you can charge as many crimes as you can prove.

And certainly keep an eye on it. It's, it's a really disturbing case. The allegations. He's Colby Erskin is innocent until proven guilty, of course.

But we'll keep an eye on it to see what comes of it. Mark Weaver, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Since his arrest, Colby Erskin posted bail and he's on house arrest with electronic GPS monitoring on the day of his arrest, he was fired from his job at that high school in Lake County Florida.

And has pleaded not guilty to these two charges that he faces. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I mentioned that leave me. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.