A former employee of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base's Wright Field South Child Development Center has been fired and barred from the installation after his arrest on charges related to alleged possession of child sexual abuse material. Diego McDonald was taken into custody Tuesday at his Dayton-area residence, and the alleged online activity that led to his arrest reportedly originated in Florida.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security executed the arrest warrant at McDonald's home on August 4, according to Springfield News-Sun. McDonald remains in custody pending transfer to Florida, where he will face charges, and the Dayton Daily News has sought comment from the Orange County Sheriff's Office regarding the case. The 88th Air Base Wing has referred further questions about the underlying allegations to that Florida agency.
Robert Purtiman confirmed that McDonald was employed by the base at the time of his arrest, and per the 88th Air Base Wing, he worked specifically at Wright Field South. Wright-Patterson has since terminated his employment and barred him from the installation entirely.
Base Reviews Classroom Footage as Investigation Continues
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations is now investigating the matter and reviewing video footage from the facility and classroom where McDonald worked, coordinating with child development center leadership as part of that effort. Jason Okumura said the safety of children entrusted to the base's child care centers remains the highest priority. The 88th Air Base Wing has acknowledged the situation's impact on families, employees and the broader Wright-Patterson community, and says it is committed to taking appropriate actions to safeguard the children in its care while pledging to communicate openly as the investigation allows.
Wright Field South is one of four child development centers on base — alongside Wright Field North, New Horizons, and Wright Care — serving children as young as six weeks old through age five for the families of active-duty personnel and DoD civilians. The stakes of that review are heightened by the base's sheer scale: Wright-Patterson is the largest single-site employer in Ohio, with a workforce of nearly 39,000 military, civilian, and contractor personnel, according to Hoodline.
Federal Screening Rules Face Renewed Scrutiny
The case raises questions about how DoD child care screening protocols functioned in this instance. Department of Defense Manual 1402.05 governs criminal history background checks for anyone working in military child care programs, mandating federal fingerprint searches, state criminal and sex offender registry checks, and installation record reviews before hiring, according to the Defense Department's own guidance hosted through the Military Child Care portal. Personnel are also subject to criminal history reverifications every five years under DoD Instruction 1402.05, per the Federal Register.
Under Department of Defense policy, any civilian or military conviction for a sexual offense, felony drug offense, or crime involving a child victim triggers automatic, mandatory disqualification from DoD child care employment, according to a USAJOBS posting from the Department of the Navy. Separately, federal law under 42 U.S.C. § 9858f bars anyone required to register as a sex offender, or convicted of child abuse or neglect, from working at a regulated child care provider, per the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law. Wright-Patterson's centers also carry accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which subjects the facilities to unannounced inspections and independent evaluations layered on top of internal military audits, the base has said.
AFOSI's Broader Role in Child Exploitation Cases
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the agency now examining the Wright Field South footage, routinely partners with Homeland Security Investigations and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children on child exploitation cases across military installations, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That kind of cross-agency coordination mirrors the Justice Department's Project Safe Childhood framework, which pairs federal, state, and local law enforcement to pursue offenders who possess or share child sexual abuse material online.
The arrest recalls a case reported by Hoodline in March, when a former substitute teacher at a Johns Hopkins University-affiliated daycare was sentenced to prison in a similar online child sexual abuse material case, prompting scrutiny of background vetting at that facility. For now, McDonald's Florida case and the AFOSI review at Wright-Patterson remain open, with base leadership saying it will share more information as the investigation permits.
