Fort Wayne man arrested and charged with Level 1 child molest

FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---A warrant was issued Wednesday for a 52-year-old Fort Wayne man charged with molesting an elementary school aged girl, landing him the highest level state felony.

Law enforcement picked him up the same day, according to the Allen County Sheriff's website where Winston David Sellars, Sr, photo appeared Wednesday evening. He is accused of molesting a girl from the ages of six to eight from October 2015 to July 2019.

It wasn’t until March 2023 that the woman was interviewed at the Dr. BIll Lewis Center for Children describing sexual assaults by Sellars, an apartment neighbor.

Winston Sellars

There’s no explanation for how she wound up at Sellars’ apartment or where the apartment was.

However, she decided more than three years ago to make a report to the Fort Wayne Police Department’s detective bureau.

The victim said Sellars would make the young girl touch his private part on top and under his clothing and then have her perform oral sex on him, according to a probable cause affidavit submitted by Detective John Chambers.

Sellars also forced her to have sexual intercourse. She told Chambers and other investigators she believed Sellars “may have put a drug into her drinks or food because the drinks always tasted weird and then she felt very tired after…..the next thing she knew, she woke up to somebody pulling down her pants,” court documents said.

The victim told a nurse at the Sexual Assault Treatment Center that Sellars “would choke me out until I passed all the way out,” court documents said.

In March 2023, Sellars came to the detective bureau and agreed to turn over his Samsung Galaxy S-22 Ultra cell phone for a forensic examination. 

On that phone, detectives found “several images of pre-pubescent naked children.” 

Not all child sex crimes reach a Level 1 Felony which carries a sentence between 20 and 40 years but have aggravating factors such as supplying booze or drugs and committing serious bodily injury, according to online documents. 

Sellars was charged Wednesday with three Felony 1 child molesting charges, one Felony 4 and a felony 6 for strangulation.

According to online documents, he lives on Northcrest Drive.