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New Kensington Man Accused Of Sexting Random Numbers

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Police say a New Kensington man sent hundreds of sexually explicit text messages to people he didn't know.

According to police, 43-year-old Edwin Meharey admitted that for three years he's texted numbers at random, sending sexually explicit messages that ended up on phones of teens and preteens.

He would send the messages to random numbers with sexual messages such as, "R u wearing underpants."

The father of a 12-year-old who received one of the messages was glad to hear about Meharey's arrest.

"I'm happy to hear it," he said. "I think all these people need to be off the face of the earth or put away or something like that."

Investigators said Meharey admitted to sending the messages with a pre-paid cell phone and continued even after being asked to stop.

A Bridgeville couple got messages from the same phone from someone who said he was a 9-year-old boy who was going to "jump off a cliff" in the woods behind an old farmhouse and asked them to come to his funeral.

Police got the pre-paid phone's ID number from AT&T and triangulated the messages to Meharey's home New Kensington where he lived with his mother.

Police got a search warrant for the home where they found the matching ID number in a phone. Police say Meharey thought he couldn't be tracked because the phone wasn't registered to him.

Meharey is being held in the Allegheny County Jail on charges of harassment and unlawful contact with minors.

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