Gainesville man arrested on child pornography charges

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Tyler Davis McCann-Carter, 24, was arrested yesterday and charged with six counts of distribution of child sexual abuse material and eight counts of possession of child sexual abuse material.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received a CyberTip on July 25, 2022, about child exploitation images shared on a Kik account. Kik provided the account’s email address, username, and IP addresses to NCMEC, which provided them to Gainesville Police Department.

The IP address was traced to a home in Gainesville, and the phone number associated with the Kik account’s email address was traced to McCann-Carter, who lives at the house.

A search warrant was executed at the house on February 3, 2023, and officers made contact with McCann-Carter and another resident of the house. McCann-Carter reportedly denied that he used Kik, saying he last used it in 2014. He initially denied being the owner of the email address associated with the account but later said it was his.

When asked about the Kik account, McCann-Carter reportedly said it looked familiar, but he didn’t know if it was his. When asked if that account would be found on any of his devices, he reportedly said, “Yeah.”

McCann-Carter reportedly said at first that he wasn’t sure which videos might have been distributed from his Kik account and said he didn’t recognize a sanitized version of one of the videos, which reportedly showed a man anally raping a nude, prepubescent girl. He reportedly said it would not be uncommon for him to create a Kik account because he “creates accounts on everything all the time.”

McCann-Carter reportedly said he has gone on Kik groups that shared child sexual abuse material and then reported those groups to Kik. He reportedly said he had probably reported 100 accounts or groups and said, “Maybe I was trying to bait somebody out, maybe.” However, he later said he had only reported someone once for child sexual abuse material.

When asked why he would send child sexual abuse material to someone to “bait” them, he reportedly said, “I could only imagine in the case that I did send it, which seems pretty clear, that the paper doesn’t lie (pointing at the legal process from Kik), that would probably be the reasoning. Of course, I don’t remember.”

He reportedly said about the child sexual abuse material, “None of that is my thing” and that he’s not attracted to children, but he later added that he “probably got very uncomfortable and just completely got rid of it all” and deleted the account. He reportedly said he probably doesn’t remember the incident because he shoved it to the back of his mind.

A child sexual abuse image and child sexual abuse video were reportedly found on his cell phones, in addition to the videos on the Kik account.

McCann-Carter has no local criminal history; bail information on pornography charges is not made public in court records.

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.