{"id":23555,"date":"2025-02-12T17:10:19","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T00:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-man-accused-of-soliciting-san-juan-county-teen\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:38:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:38:36","slug":"durango-man-accused-of-soliciting-san-juan-county-teen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-man-accused-of-soliciting-san-juan-county-teen\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango man accused of soliciting San Juan County teen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=b0181f77-0cce-5b0c-9766-1e2db157c38d&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"640\" height=\"416\" alt=\"Seth Zielinski, 23, of Durango, was arrested Feb. 11, 2025 and charged with child solicitation by electronic device.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Seth Zielinski, 23, of Durango, was arrested Feb. 11, 2025 and charged with child solicitation by electronic device.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A Durango man faces child solicitation charges after allegedly having a nearly 2\u00bd-year online relationship with a teenage girl.<\/p>\n<p>Seth Zielinski, 23, was arrested Feb. 11 and booked into the San Juan County Detention Center on a charge of solicitation of a child by electronic communication device, a fourth-degree felony.<\/p>\n<p>The charges are in connection to Zielinski allegedly trading more than 4,000 messages with a 14-year-old San Juan County girl.<\/p>\n<p>The San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office began investigating Zielinski on May 6 after being alerted to the man reportedly \u201ctrying to have sex\u201d with the teen girl, according to the affidavit for arrest warrant.<\/p>\n<p>A member of the girl\u2019s family called authorities when she discovered the girl had been texting and sharing video calls with Zielinski, who had been described as a \u201cprior co-worker\u201d and \u201cformer family friend,\u201d the affidavit states.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators collected the girl\u2019s cellphone and conducted a \u201cCellebrite extraction\u201d of text messages from the device. The first messages were sent in June 22, the affidavit states.<\/p>\n<p>The teen reportedly found the messages to be \u201cintriguing,\u201d and shared that she found Zielinski to be \u201cfine\u201d with a \u201cgreat personality,\u201d the affidavit states.<\/p>\n<p>The conversations between Zielinksi and the teen become \u201csexual in nature.\u201d The teen admitted \u201cshe has a crush on him, and Zielinksi then began \u201cflirting\u201d with her, the affidavit states.<\/p>\n<p>By May 2024, Zielinski reportedly had asked the girl for photos of her \u201cgetting dressed\u201d and then to meet him at the Animas Valley Mall, stating he has a \u201ctreat for her,\u201d the affidavit states.<\/p>\n<p>The conversation about a meeting at the mall continues with Zielinski reportedly \u201cmaking sexual advances\u201d and asking to teen \u201cmultiple times to engage in sexual acts,\u201d the affidavit states.<\/p>\n<p>When Zielinski found out about the investigation, he reportedly contacted the girl\u2019s family and stated that \u201chis phone was stolen and that the sexual messages were not sent from him,\u201d according to the affidavit.<\/p>\n<p>A preliminary hearing for Zielinski is set for 8:30 a.m. Feb. 20 at Aztec Magistrate Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zielinski arrested after 8-month investigation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78175,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23555\/revisions\/78175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23555"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}