18-year-old arrested for possession of child pornography
Staff report
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Christopher Deon Flintroyal Jr., 18, has been charged with 10 counts of possession of child sexual abuse material.
A Gainesville Police Department Detective investigated 11 CyberTips from Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, and Dropbox reporting child exploitation images and videos. IP addresses associated with several of the Cybertips led to a residence in Gainesville owned by a relative of Flintroyal.
A review of the account names related to the CyberTips led to the identification of Flintroyal as the owner of the accounts; the detective noted that Flintroyal would have been a minor when the CyberTips were originally reported.
On August 27, the detective made contact with Flintroyal, who reportedly agreed to speak with the detective in an unmarked vehicle parked outside the residence.
Post Miranda, Flintroyal reportedly claimed that his accounts had been hacked, but he agreed to let a detective search his two cell phones. Flintroyal later changed his story and admitted that he was the owner of the accounts reported in the CyberTips, but he said the videos had been shared with him in group chats when he was a minor. He was reportedly adamant that no child sexual abuse material (CSAM) would be found on his phones.
However, after a detective reportedly found “numerous” CSAM videos on one of the phones, Flintroyal reportedly claimed that he had been unable to delete the Google account with the images, so he hadn’t been able to remove them from the device.
After the detective noted that although the CyberTips were filed when Flintroyal was a juvenile, he was being arrested because he still possessed the images as an adult, Flintroyal reportedly acknowledged that he should have deleted the account or gotten rid of the device; he also reportedly admitted to viewing other CSAM videos on another app.
The arrest report describes ten videos, which mostly show prepubescent or pubescent juvenile male and female subjects masturbating or in sexual poses while partially or completely nude.
The detective noted that about 20 more CSAM videos were found in the initial search, so there may be more charges after both phones are searched.
Flintroyal has been charged with 10 counts of possession of child sexual abuse material. His full criminal history is unavailable because those documents are not posted for sexual offenses, but he has no local adult criminal history. Judge Meshon Rawls set bail at $250,000.
Articles about arrests are based on reports from law enforcement agencies. The charges listed are taken from the arrest report and/or court records and are only accusations. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.