A 21-year-old Vancouver man appeared Thursday in Clark County Superior Court to face child pornography-related allegations.
Andrew David Carlson was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of five counts of first-degree possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and a single count of first-degree dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Judge Gregory Gonzales set Carlson’s bail at $7,500. An arraignment date was set for Sept. 20.
According to a probable cause affidavit, a detective with the Vancouver Police Department’s Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit began investigating the case involving Carlson in March. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provided a tip to the police department about the upload of a single image of child pornography to a Yahoo Messenger account. The name attached to the account was Anthony Carlson.
The initial image portrayed a girl about 11 to 13 years old engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to the affidavit.
Using phone numbers with Vancouver area codes, Facebook accounts and cellphone records, the detective tied Carlson to the Yahoo account. Police searched Carlson’s Vancouver home, where he lived with family, and seized several electronic devices, court records said.
A forensic analysis uncovered files of child pornography on two cellphones and a laptop. The files included images with girls as young as 4 engaged in sex acts, according to the affidavit.
Carlson was taken to the police department’s East Precinct and interviewed. During the interview, he allegedly admitted to using the Yahoo account with his name earlier this year to try to send images of child pornography to someone else, but he was locked out of the account, the affidavit says.
Carlson also told detectives he views child pornography once a week, looking for images involving girls who are about 7 years old, according to the affidavit.
He initially said he was downloading the images because he’d been threatened, but when it was pointed out to him that he downloaded images two days prior, he said he couldn’t stop himself from looking, according to the affidavit.
