One of the strangest local sports anchor stories in recent memory comes from…where else, Las Vegas. 50-year-old Randall William Howe, who goes by Randy Howe on air and has been at Vegas NBC affiliate KSNV since 2008, was arrested Tuesday morning at a Las Vegas bar and has since been charged with one count each of indecent exposure and open and gross lewdness. And, yeah, the details (as relayed from a police report by Ricardo Torres-Cortez of The Las Vegas Sun ) are pretty gross:
A worker told responding officers they noticed the patron display “strange behavior,” which included walking to the bathroom with his penis outside his pants, police said.
Surveillance video reviewed by police showed the patron unzip his pants and fondle himself, according to the report.
Howe insisted he was not masturbating, saying he had a severe rash and was scratching himself, the report said. He said he “probably shouldn’t have been scratching himself at the bar and that it was a bad decision,” according to the report.
Well, yeah, it sure sounds like that was a bad decision. The report also adds that Howe was not served alcohol, but rather energy drinks. Howe hasn’t tweeted since Monday, so there’s no further comment from him there. But Mike Shoro of The Las Vegas Review-Journal has some further disturbing details from court documents:
Two North Las Vegas police officers were alerted at 9:17 a.m. about the alleged lewd behavior, which the caller said had been going on since 8:30 a.m., the document said.
“Howe continued to look around the entire time as if he was nervous or paranoid that someone was watching,” an officer wrote in the report.
Employees told police that Howe, 50, visited the bar several times before, adding that it wasn’t the first time they had seen him masturbate there. The document said Howe was seen doing so on video about 10:40 a.m. Oct. 30 at the business, although the footage was later automatically overwritten.
The bar didn’t report that first one to the police at the time, as they “hoped it was an isolated incident.”
But being accused of not one, but two, morning public masturbation sessions at a sports bar doesn’t seem like it’s going to be very good for your career. KSNV general manager Larry Strumwasser told the Review-Journal he couldn’t comment on Howe’s employment status, citing company policy (it’s unclear if that’s a KSNV policy or one from parent company Sinclair), but said “We are obviously very concerned about the seriousness of these charges. We are investigating everything.” We’ll see if that leads to Howe exiting the station. But in this case, what happened in Las Vegas certainly didn’t stay in Las Vegas.
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.