LANCASTER NEW ERA (LANCASTER, PA.)
September 2, 2004, Thursday

By David O'Connor

A borough councilman from Wrightsville has been accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in Delaware in mid-July.

Fred Smeltzer Jr., 32, is charged with two counts of first-degree rape and one count of second-degree unlawful sexual contact.

The offenses are alleged to have occurred the night of July 15-16 at Gullsway Campground on state Route 26, east of Dagsboro, Del.

Smeltzer, of the 300 block of North Fourth Street, also is deputy chief of the Wrightsville Fire Company and is employed as a firefighter at Fort Indiantown Gap National Guard Training Center.

Smeltzer is alleged to have given several alcoholic drinks to the 15-year-old girl on a camping trip before he had sexual contact with her, according to the York Daily Record newspaper.

Cpl. Jeffrey Oldham of the Delaware state police told the New Era this week that Smeltzer turned himself in to state police at Georgetown, Del.

Officials said Smeltzer is in the third year of his first four-year term on the council in Wrightsville, which is across the Susquehanna River from Columbia.

Smeltzer was taken to Sussex Correctional Institution in Georgetown, and was later released on $21,000 bail.

He waived his preliminary hearing in Delaware, scheduled for Aug. 26, and the case is now in that state's Superior Court.

Delaware state police said in a court affidavit they were contacted Aug. 12 by a friend of Smeltzer's, who said the councilman raped his daughter at the campground, the York paper reported.

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