Gainesville man arrested for possession of child pornography

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Jantzen Lee Weaver, 22, was arrested yesterday and charged with 11 counts of possession of child pornography and one count of distribution of child pornography.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a tip on January 18, 2023, that a Snapchat account had uploaded and distributed a video related to child exploitation. Snapchat provided the username, the date of birth provided when the account was created, the email address for the account, and the login IP address. The video, which portrayed a male child being raped by an adult male, was uploaded on January 18.

A subpoena issued to Snapchat reportedly produced the same video, along with seven “selfies” that matched pictures of Weaver. Snapchat also provided chats that reportedly included a conversation in which the video was shared and discussed.

Gainesville Police Department traced the IP address to Weaver’s apartment and served a search warrant yesterday. Post Miranda, Weaver reportedly provided the passcodes to two cell phones and provided several email addresses and two Snapchat accounts. When the video from the tip was described to him, Weaver reportedly said he didn’t remember it, but when he was shown sanitized screenshots from the video, he said he recognized it and had uploaded and shared it with another Snapchat user. He reportedly said he originally found the video on Twitter.

Weaver reportedly said he has viewed and distributed child sexual abuse material before, possibly 10 to 20 videos since January 2023, and that he has distributed videos to at least one other person besides the one in Snapchat. Weaver reportedly said he’s not a threat to society because he doesn’t actually like to be around children because they’re too loud.

A search of one of Weaver’s phones reportedly produced 44 child sexual abuse videos, ranging from 12 seconds to almost 19 minutes in length. Analysis of the phone reportedly showed that he had just viewed one of the videos the previous evening.

Judge Thomas Jaworski set bail at $600,000.

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.