Carson City sheriff candidate Donald Gibson is facing questions about his past friendship with Gabriel Miles, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to statutory sexual seduction involving a victim younger than 16. Gibson has said he ended their close relationship after learning about Miles’s past, but accounts differ over aspects of their connection.
At a community forum, Gibson highlighted his experience investigating sexual assaults. He told voters he had served as the lead investigator on cases before handing them to detectives and had solved some himself. His comments followed a Facebook post in July addressing allegations about his friendship with Miles.
In that post, Gibson acknowledged that the two had been close and that Miles’s family had lived on his property for several months. He wrote that he learned about Miles’s past roughly a year and a half after the family moved away. Gibson described what he learned as involving a “relationship with a teenage girl” when Miles was in his twenties. He said he confronted Miles and that his family subsequently chose to distance themselves.
Gibson also wrote that he and Miles continued playing softball together despite no longer being close. He acknowledged that a printing business owned by Miles and his wife had donated campaign shirts. Gibson said he did not support or condone criminal behavior, particularly crimes involving children.
Miles confirmed that he and Gibson were no longer friends and that his family had stayed on Gibson’s property. However, he said he did not live there himself because he was renovating the house his family intended to move into. Miles also said he knew nothing about the shirt donation and disputed Gibson’s account of playing sports together, saying he does not play softball.
Carson Now reporter Kelsey Penrose said she first heard three years ago that Gibson had allowed Miles to stay with him, while she was reporting on Miles’s involvement in youth sports. According to Penrose, several sources said Gibson knew Miles was a sex offender before and during the stay. She also heard that Miles was using another address on the sex offender registry, which would be a felony. Because none of her sources would speak on the record, she could not publish a story about those allegations.
Penrose instead reported the matter to the Carson City Sheriff’s Office and said she received no response. Responding to Gibson’s July post, she expressed concern about a law enforcement official describing child abuse as a relationship, saying her personal view was that enforcing the law requires respecting every part of it. Gibson said he stood by his written account and had nothing more to add.
