A twisted Pennsylvania school resource officer was arrested Wednesday for allegedly pressuring a 14-year-old student into a sexual relationship and molesting her during a school dance he was chaperoning.

Costas Nick Alestas, 43, is also accused of sneaking a disturbing up-the-skirt video of an 11-year-old girl as she walked down the hallway at East Hills Middle School in Bethlehem.

Alestas’ alleged abuse came to light last month when the teenager confided in a guidance counselor about the weeks-long relationship, officials said.

Her mother had previously found a trove of dirty text messages between the pair, but Alestas — who was also the school’s co-ed soccer coach — tried avoiding capture by using a second phone number, the Bethlehem Police Department said Wednesday.

“There was deceptive behavior trying to mask who the text messages were from,” Bethlehem Police Chief Michelle Kott said at a press conference.

The teenager quickly gave him up when investigators questioned her, saying he had given her his personal phone number while they were on school grounds.

“The communication with Alestas included conversations about engaging in sexual acts. As the communication between Alestas and the victim continued, the interactions progressed into several encounters involving sexual contact between the two,” the department said in a release. 

The perverted encounters allegedly took place both during the school day in his office and after school inside Alestas’s car, police said.

One horrifying incident even occurred “during a school dance while Alestas was on duty and in police uniform.”

That same day, the disgraced school cop also allegedly filmed the video of the second, 11-year-old victim, which was recovered when investigators combed through his phone.

An analysis of Alestas’ phone showed about 4,980 messages exchanged with the 14-year-old, and 49 phone calls, since March 26, according to a police affidavit obtained by Lehigh Valley News.

The arrest came as a shock to the Bethlehem Police Department, who said Alestas was a respected six-year veteran of the department.

“There was no indication that this was going on or that this individual had engaged in any of this behavior. He was well-liked at the school. He had received awards of merit and the past. So this comes as an absolute shock and surprise,” Bethlehem Police Chief Michelle Kott said.

Alestas was immediately placed on administrative leave and has been charged with several felony offenses, including statutory sexual assault, institutional sexual assault and invasion of privacy.

Court records show Alestas was unable to post bail and remains in the county jail.

Alestas became the second school resource officer in Northampton County to be arrested and charged with allegedly carrying out an inappropriate relationship with a student in the last few weeks.

Ex-Easton Area High School officer John Smoke was busted last month after he allegedly “sent explicit photos to an underage student.”

“We need to start talking about whether there’s prophylactic measures. We can take as far as policy and procedures that can lessen opportunities for this kind of behavior,” Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON D.C. — Centre and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania have not certified the results from the April 23 primary election due to ongoing court cases regarding which ballots should be counted. The certification deadline in Pennsylvania was Monday.

On May 6, Centre County GOP Chair Michelle Schellberg and 17 local voters filed a petition against the county’s board of elections, challenging its decision to count misdated or undated mail-in ballots in the primary election.

The plaintiffs claim that the board of elections counted 95 of these ballots, including several that were missing the month, day, year or had the wrong date entirely. 

Schellberg and the local voters argue that a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in 2022 and a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 2023 prohibit Pennsylvania counties from counting ballots with these mistakes. 

The county court will hold a hearing for the case tomorrow morning at 9 a.m EDT.

Luzerne County planned to certify the primary election results on Monday, but had to delay it due to an appeal filed by Pennsylvania Rep. Michael Cabell (R), who is three votes behind his GOP primary opponent Jamie Walsh in the race for the 117th House District seat.

Cabell challenged the county’s board of elections, asking officials to tally a provisional ballot and reject a separate ballot because its outer envelope is missing a signature. He also asked election officials to give him credit for write-in votes that said his name, according to local reporting. 

The board rejected his challenge, so Cabell appealed it in court, and a three-judge panel ruled today in favor of the board, saying that they don’t have to count the write-in votes Cabell requested and that they were correct in including one ballot and not including another that he disputed.

Luzerne County has decided to do a partial certification tomorrow, excluding the 117th House District race, so that the other contests’ results are not held up.

According to local reporting, County Manager Romilda Crocamo said she had not heard of the ruling and did not immediately know when the ballots would be tallied. She said that the board may wait until further appeals are decided.

For now, voters in these counties still do not know who their candidates will be for the 2024 election, even though the primary election was a few weeks ago.

Read more about the Centre County case here.

Thanks to the increase of electric vehicles and other battery-using technologies, the demand for lithium is expected to skyrocket in the coming years. One odd but potent source of the metal is a Pennsylvania wastewater stream, says a new study.

As we’ve reported previously, based on current demand, the world is going to need about 59 new lithium mines hauling out 45,000 tonnes of the metal by 2035. The silvery metal is a key component of rechargeable batteries which are powering seemingly everything these days from countertop ice cube makers to freight ships.

Due to the growing demand for lithium, researchers are developing quicker ways to harvest it from the brine pits which, along with more traditional mines, are a primary source of the element. They are also looking in other places for sources of the material.

One of those places is a wastewater stream produced as a result of a fracking operation outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There, operators of the Marcellus shale gas wells need to report levels of certain materials in the wastewater to regulators. Because the reports must mention lithium levels, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh were able to conduct an analysis that showed that if a technique could be developed that would remove 100% of the lithium from the wastewater, about 40% of America’s demand for the metal could be met.

Currently, lithium can be removed from water with an efficiency rate of more than 90%, so the goal is not too far away.

And while the wastewater at these particular fracking mines is rich in lithium, they are not the only sources of Marcellus shale in the country. West Virginia could also be a rich source, say the researchers.

Because the US Geological survey has classified lithium as a critical mineral (technically an element), the government wants all lithium produced domestically by 2030. In terms of resource allocation, that would be an improvement over the current method which consists of extracting it from brine ponds in Chile, shipping it to China to be processed, and shipping it back to the States for use.

The next step for exploring the wastewater stream as a source of lithium is to analyze the environmental impacts of extracting it and to build a pilot plant to research and develop more efficient extraction techniques.

“Wastewater from oil and gas is a burgeoning issue,” says study lead author Justin Mackey. “Right now, it’s just minimally treated and reinjected.” However, he adds that developing better extraction techniques could provide serious value in turning a wastewater into something much more valuable. “It’s been dissolving rocks for hundreds of millions of years – essentially, the water has been mining the subsurface,” he says.

A paper about the finding has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: University of Pittsburgh