Missouri man gets prison for child porn
A Missouri man was sentenced this week in Monroe County Circuit Court to four years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for possession of child pornography stemming from a 2015 arrest on Interstate 255 in Columbia.
Lonnie Dean Pearson, 55, of Kirkwood, Mo., was given credit for 200 days already served in jail and also fined $1,949 in addition to his four-year prison term.
Pearson was arrested Nov. 7, 2015, on a St. Louis County probation violation and for possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.
During the I-255 traffic stop, police said Pearson consented to searches of his vehicle and all contents in his possession, including a cell phone. His phone was turned over to the Metropolitan Enforcement Group of Southwestern Illinois multi-jurisdictional drug task force.
At that time, MEGSI found pornographic images on Pearsonā€™s phone and decided to involve the FBIā€™s Cyber Crimes Task Force. A detailed analysis of the phone by task force investigators determined that Pearsonā€™s phone contained sexually explicit imagesĀ of adultsĀ into which the faces of children were digitally inserted onto the bodies, police said.
Pearson was subsequently charged with possessing child porn.