Illinois Republican Rep. Randy Hultgren fired a top aide over the weekend after police caught the staffer shirtless in a car with a teenage boy.
Nick Provenzano was not charged with any crime for the October incident, but Hultgren fired him when the incident came to light, Politico reports.
Provenzano worked as Hultgren’s deputy district director from 2016 until Wednesday, when the office found out about the incident and “immediately placed him on leave before his eventual termination,” a spokesperson for the congressman’s office told Politico.
A police report obtained by Politico shows that Provenzano and the unnamed teenage boy met on the gay hookup app Grindr, and indicates that Provenzano may not have known the boy’s age.
Police found Provenzano and the teenager in his black SUV parked at the dark end of a dead-end street on Oct. 21 after someone reported the suspicious activity. The first officers on the scene found Provenzano shirtless but wearing pants, and the teenager fully clothed.
Provenzano told the officer he and the teenager were “hanging out” and “talking about life,” and said he didn’t have his shirt on because he was hot. Provenzano told the officer later that “did not want to admit to anything, but stated that contact between him and [the teenager] was consensual in nature, that nobody was forced or coerced each other to engage in any acts they did not want to, and that he believed [the teenager] was eighteen (18) years old.”
The teenager later told police he had met an older man, Provenzano, on Grindr, where the two exchanged messages. The teen had asked if the older man wanted to meet as a kind of “live in the moment” thing, the boy told police. He said he and Provenzano had talked in the car and held hands, but otherwise there was little contact between them.
The teen further said that though he entered his birthdate correctly when signing up for Grindr, the app automatically changed his birth year so it would appear he was 18.
Prosecutors eventually declined to bring charges against Provenzano.
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