A dog-fighting investigation has led to child pornography charges against Aliquippa High School boys varsity basketball coach Nicholas Lackovich, who is also a Beaver County probation officer.
The criminal complaint filed Thursday charges Lackovich, 54, with two felony counts of sexual abuse of children by knowingly possessing child pornography, said Beaver County District Attorney David J. Lozier.
Lackovich appeared Thursday before District Judge Joseph Shafer, who set his bond at $100,000 and ordered him to avoid contact with minors.
He said in a phone interview that he's innocent.
“That's not what I do. That's not what I am. I'm highly offended about this,” Lackovich said. “Anybody that knows me knows I didn't do any of this.”
State police suspect Lackovich was breeding dogs to fight and holding fights in his Center house. As part of their investigation, troopers seized two computers and a cellphone from his home, as well as a work computer.
With the help of the FBI, the devices were being searched for evidence of dog fighting when a child pornography image was found, Lozier said. Obtaining new warrants, authorities conducted further searches and turned up four more images.
Most people charged with child pornography have hundreds of images on their computer, Lackovich noted. Police haven't said whether they found the images in a browser cache, which would mean they were inadvertently downloaded while he or someone else was using a computer to surf the web, he said.
It's telling that police had the computers for more than a year, couldn't find evidence of dog-fighting and came up with these charges after he filed a petition to force them to return his property, Lackovich said.
“On the day that they finally have to own up to the fact that they don't have a dog fighting case against me, they come up with this,” he said.
Lackovich said he will submit his retirement papers to Beaver County and resign from his coaching position so as not to create problems for the school district or the basketball program.
Lackovich has been on administrative leave from Beaver County Adult Probation during the dog fighting investigation, which started in August 2015.
Aliquippa School District didn't suspend Lackovich during the dog-fighting investigation. In fact, the board gave him a new three-year coaching contract in April. He coaches the boys varsity basketball team, which won the PIAA Class AA state championship last season with a 30-0 record, and was named 2015-16 Class AA Coach of the Year by the Pennsylvania Sports Writers Association.
The district's superintendent, Peter Carbone, and school board president Terry Swanson couldn't immediately be reached Thursday for comment.
Brian Bowling is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at bbowling@tribweb.com.
