Jalen Kitna, UF backup quarterback, arrested on child pornography charges
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Jalen James Kitna, 19, UF’s backup quarterback, was arrested this afternoon for two counts of distribution of child exploitation material and three counts of possession of child pornography.
Gainesville Police Department (GPD) received a Cyber Tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a Discord user had distributed an image of child sexual abuse material through their platform.
Further investigation by GPD revealed that two images were shared via Discord from a Gainesville residence and that the probable Discord account holder was Jalen Kitna. A GPD detective contacted Kitna at his residence and interviewed him; Kitna reportedly said he remembered sharing the two images but believed them to be “legal” since he found them online. He reportedly said that he later realized he should not have shared the images, based on the reaction from other Discord users. He said that his Discord account was deactivated shortly after that, and he assumed someone had reported him to Discord. He later received an email from Discord, stating that his account was deactivated for violation of the terms of service.
Kitna’s electronic devices were seized as part of the search warrant, and preliminary analysis reportedly found additional images of child sexual abuse material.
All of the above information is from a GPD press release. Arrest reports are normally available from the Alachua County Jail, but this report is not being released to the media via the usual routes.
The Gainesville Police Department wants parents to be aware that children are solicited and exploited through social networking applications. These social networking applications, like Discord, Facebook, KiK, Snapchat, TikTok and Tagged are also used to share images and videos which depict young children being sexually abused. Please be vigilant and aware of any social networking platforms your children may access.
Updated Dec. 1: Information from the arrest report is available here.
Wow!
I am shocked! I guess anyone can be sick.
He could have had any woman eating out the Palm of his had and he chooses to watch little kids very sick minded individual people please watch your children and the people who watch your children
“He could have had any woman eating out of the palm of his hand” is a replusive and untrue statement. Your disrespect and erroneous ideas about women clearly show what you think of women. You are wrong.
I doubt he’ll ever play football again. And I thought he was going to be the Gator QB of the future.
This kid had everything going for him. His father was an NFL QB and he was the future starting QB at our school. He was a damn good player. I saw all three games he played in this year. He threw his entire future away. I just can’t understand his stupidity.
That’s because it wasn’t his “stupidity” that did him in, it was his mental illness: he’s a pedophile.
You can’t say he is pedophile….do you intimately know the facts of the story??
If he had taken up soccer and was playing in Qatar instead, this would not be news there. That’s why America is better than most other countries, where he may have to start planning to move to.
If true, very stupid of the young QB with so much football potential. Did he find the pictures on the general internet and pass them on? That has to be taken into account, but they must have looked like very young people to be flagged on that site. Billy hopefully has someone ready to decommit from a big school and come to UF now, local kid is good but hasn’t got it all figured out yet, and is prone to injury.
Alachua County Citizen, do you even know what Discord is? It’s not a “site”. The dumbed down explanation is that it is a messaging platform (originally designed for gamers) but a lot more. You cannot message someone without knowing their ID or if you’re on the same server that they’re on (message board) and even then, you have to allow that in your settings. You can look for servers based upon search words, but for the most part, unless you’re linked to the actual board or the link is shared, you won’t just stumble upon it.
From the information in this article, it seems as though he posted the pics within a server and others on that board reported it.
He could have found nude selfies posted by some teenage girl on one site and then shared them on Discord. Supposedly it’s two pictures of one underage-appearing individual. And a few more similar cached pictures were found after sifting through all his devices. They probably hope to bust people who actually make a habit of looking at and sharing child porn instead of clicking on the wrong link once or twice.
He may be a victim of that woke ideology where they want to teach
Children that gender neutrality stuff
And those new pronouns they want people to identify by now…that “then they” stuff…Didn’t Desantis make it illegal for schools to be teaching it to kids less than 3rd grade? and showing drag shows to kids, etc. That rainbow flag stuff and that it’s ok to be gay and transgendered…the
Woke are indoctrinating children in the school system with all this sexuality stuff.
Fool.
He’s a “victim” of his own mental illness: pedophilia.
Or he could be doing it because he learned it from a priest or preacher. Like all the priests in the Catholic Church who raped hundreds of thousands of children, or all the victims who were raped by Baptist preachers. Seems more logical to me.
“Did he find the pictures on the general internet and pass them on? That has to be taken into account, but they must have looked like very young people to be flagged on that site.”
What? Whenever any of these creeps are busted for pictures or overt acts, no one, not one person, makes this statement. Wrong is wrong. Nothing has to be taken into consideration. No victim blaming. There were other pictures on his computer.
From the limited information, it sounds like it may have been something more along the lines of teenage girls taking nude selfies of themselves and posting them online instead of pictures of toddlers getting raped or whatever you think. One of the media sources implied that it was two pictures of an underage individual. As far as “pictures on his computer,” your computer keeps copies of all the images you look at online. Maybe he was looking at one legal porn site and clicked on the wrong link. Obviously there should be penalties, but they should be based on the severity or magnitude of the crimes instead of a 1960s-Texas approach of throwing people in prison for 20 years for possessing a joint. I doubt he would have clicked [SHARE] two times or whatever he did if he knew he was committing major federal crimes. Sometimes images look different on a little phone screen vs. full size. But go ahead and burn the witch if you want.
into the woodchipper!
I know I am old now…..I take way too many medicines and don’t know what Discord is or for.
Maybe they are pictures of a young lady that said she was eighteen and as really 15 or 16.
I am not justifying what he did but I could understand if he was dooped.
I used to teach high school math and one of my students had naked pics that girls at school would send him….That is child porn. I informed him that the person that sent them and him could be nailed for child porn.
Be like in the older days when you would meet a girl at a party and she said she was eighteen, and after you two fooled around, the police would show up and arrest you for statutory rape because she lied and was only 15.
Once again, not condoning what he did, but I can see a mistake happening
I don’t know why anyone would be surprised by something like this. Child pornography is unfortunately consumed by men of every class, race, and success level. Just look at all of the religious people who prey on children. We know that after church every Sunday, preachers and priests around the country and the world log on to the internet to look at child porn. So no surprise here. He’ll get the societal shunning he deserves. Too bad more men don’t get what they deserve for doing this sort of thing.
Incumbent winner of the dumbest comment award….. P. Floyd
Yea and let’s add T. Burgess to the list also. She is runner up. Instead of admitting he’s wrong she trying to justify why he did it.
What he did if wrong don’t get me wrong but the girl is 17 and he is 19. I thought fla is a 16-23 yr old state
If you know “the girl” is 17, you know more than the police do. The police have indicated one shared image was of a prepubescent girl (so, 12-ish or younger), and said the ages of the pubescent girls couldn’t be determined. Kitna said he found all the images online. No reports mention Kitna knowing these girls.
Stop making up lies. Kitna stated he found the images online. This must be your friend or family member.
Stop making up lies. Kitna stated he found the images online. This must be your friend or family member. You can’t clear his name baby he is disgusting and probably a future child molester. We just saved someone’s child from being hurt by this sicko.
The Tampa Bay Times got hold of the arrest report and noted one of the images Kitna shared was of a prepubescent girl engaged in a sex act with an adult male. The other shared image was of a pubescent-age girl. “So young junior” were among the words on both shared photos.
Three additional images found on his phone were of pubescent juveniles of indeterminate age showering, and those photos were saved to his phone a year ago. Those saved photos appeared to be self-produced, according to the report. Whether those photos were saved intentionally or just left over in the cache from visiting a website is not reported.
Kitna also told police he visited Discord servers and a similar group on Kik that “discuss, solicit, and distribute child sex abuse material,” but that he tried to “shy away from it.” How frequently he may have visited such groups is unclear. Kitna claimed he thought the images were legal because he found them on the internet.
Pretty clear that he actively sought out this sort of material and had been doing it for at least a year. And if he didn’t recognize the photo he shared of a prepubescent girl wasn’t legal, he certainly doesn’t need to risk any more head injury playing foolsball.