A Vancouver man who allegedly possessed at least 8,000 images of child pornography on his tablet made a first appearance Thursday in Clark County Superior Court.
Brian K. Schofield, 34, appeared on suspicion of 10 counts of first-degree possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Additional analysis of his tablet, where thousands of images were already found, is still pending, and a second device was also seized and is being analyzed, court records state. Police estimated the ages of the victims to be between 5 to 12 years old.
On Aug. 9, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received information from Google that one of its users was uploading child pornography. Google provided 12 cyber tips in which the same user was uploading images and provided 533 files of suspected child pornography to authorities, as well as data associated with the account, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
The data was eventually traced back to Schofield and his Vancouver residence. Detectives with the Vancouver Police Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit served a search warrant at his residence Wednesday morning in the 6000 block of Northeast 10th Avenue. He wasn’t home, however, the affidavit states.
Investigators found a tablet in the process of downloading child pornography, and an initial screen of the device found thousands of images of suspected child pornography, according to court documents.
Police located Schofield at Friends of the Carpenter, a nonprofit, faith-based facility, where he works, court records show. Schofield reportedly had another electronic device on him, and it was seized for analysis, the affidavit said.
In an interview with detectives, Schofield allegedly said that he started looking at child pornography when he was a truck driver in his early to mid 20s. He estimated that he has 10,000 to 20,000 images of child pornography on his devices, according to court records.
On Thursday, Schofield’s bail was set at $50,000. He will be arraigned Oct. 5.
