A former Faulkner County sheriff's office deputy who now serves as a correctional officer and a part-time police officer was arrested Thursday on a charge of sexual solicitation of a child, authorities said.
In an online chat, Josh D. George, 30, of Quitman began communicating with a person he believed to be the mother of two young children and later arranged to meet her and the youths "for sexual purposes," the Faulkner County sheriff's office said in a statement.
The purported mother he was chatting with was actually an undercover investigator, the sheriff's office said. George was arrested in the parking lot of a Conway grocery store after meeting the investigator there, police said.
George began working as a sheriff's deputy in 2007 before being fired in 2013 and rehired as a detention officer, the statement said. He reportedly quit that post a month later. He has been working recently as a correctional officer with the Department of Community Corrections in Little Rock and as a part-time patrol officer in Guy.
George remained in the Faulkner County jail Friday with no bail pending an initial court appearance set for Monday.