HANCOCK COUNTY — The Greenfield man facing several child molest charges from incidents officials say began in 2019 is in Hancock County Circuit Court this week for his Level 1 felony trial.
Kirk Dale Lonas, 59, 1000 block of King Maple Drive, has been charged with two separate Level 1 felony counts of child molesting and two separate Level 4 felony counts of molesting. Lonas has been accused of molesting two children in Greenfield on multiple occasions at two Greenfield residences from July 2019 through August 2020.
The children were younger than 16 when the incidents occurred, officials said in a probable cause affidavit.
The trial was officially scheduled to start Tuesday after a lengthy jury selection process which began around 8:30 a.m. The session didn’t wrap up until well after lunch time. Judge Scott Sirk is overseeing the case which is expected to take several days. Before the jury was sworn in, one female juror asked the court to dismiss her from the case as she could not be partial due to the nature of the trial. The court agreed to do so, allowing an alternate to take her place.
Sirk officially swore the jury, eight males and four females, in late Tuesday afternoon before both sides were expected to give their opening arguments.
Sirk told the jury he thought they would hear from one witness before he sent them home late Tuesday; however, since it was so late in the afternoon, Sirk decided to push back opening arguments until Wednesday morning. Day two of the trial was expected to start around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday (today) with several witnesses expected to be called.
If found guilty, the Level 1 felonies are punishable by anywhere from 20 to 40 years in prison.
During the opening day of the trial Lonas sat quietly to the far left side of the defense table next to his lawyers. He wore an eye patch over his right eye. Lonas suffered the eye injury in August of 2022 while in the Hancock County Jail where he is still being held under a $150,000 cash bond as his case makes its way through the court process. Doctors at St. Vincent Hospital advised at the time Lonas had lost all vision in his right eye.
The state’s case against Lonas is being handled by Hancock County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Aimee Herring, along with Deputy Prosecutor Abigail Jessup. Lonas is being represented by officials from the Hancock County Public Defenders office, attorneys Myron Rahn and Jeremy Teipen, court records state.
An original case against Lonas was officially opened in October of 2020 court records show. Lonas was arrested later that month after having left the Hancock County area. A warrant had been issued for his arrest three weeks earlier, but local authorities couldn’t find him. Lonas was eventually found in Crawford County, Missouri, before being brought back to the county to face the charges. At the time of his arrest Lonas owned Avert Security, a security firm in Indianapolis.
Official records show Lonas was originally arrested and charged with the child molest crimes on Oct. 29, 2020.
Lonas had a new Level 1 felony charge added to his case later in December of 2021 equating to the four charges he now faces. That probable cause affidavit stated one of the children told Herring during an interview that she had “been raped by Kirk on multiple occasions.” The child stated the rapes happened “a handful of times,” close to the time she disclosed the prior abuse to officials in September of 2020.
According to the original probable cause affidavit associated with the first set of charges, the children told investigators Lonas had fondled them on multiple occasions. One child said she had been inappropriately touched by Lonas more than a dozen times.
