Police caught an elementary school teacher with a phone loaded with kiddie porn. Law enforcement officials said some of the graphic images appear to have been shot in his classroom. This happened in Jacksonville, Florida but this guy used a messaging app to communicate with people all over the country and the world. His victims could be anywhere.
Let’s break down the disturbing details
The Suspect
United States Attorney Maria Chapa Lopez announced that 40-year-old Thomas Lester Hazouri, Jr. was arrested and charged with distributing child pornography.
Hazouri is a second-grade teacher at Mayport Elementary School in Jacksonville. He’s also the son of a member of Jacksonville City Council.
Hazouri has been a teacher since 2003. The Superintendent of Duval County Public Schools said, ““It is both alarming and disappointing to learn that one of our teachers is alleged to have exploited children through such abhorrent activities. As soon as we learned of the investigation, we took immediate action to ensure he had no further interaction with any of our students.”
45 Videos Of Child Sex Abuse
Officials said Hazouri used the Kik messaging app for some of his activities. Last March, MediaLab, the company that hosts the app, notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a user uploaded suspected child sexual abuse videos. According to the complaint against Hazouri, he went by the user name “mybfsgaynotme.”
Investigators traced the IP address of the user back to Hazouri’s house in Jacksonville Beach. Law enforcement secured a search warrant for his Kik account. That’s when they say they found 19 images and 45 videos of child sex abuse.
On August 6, detectives executed a search warrant at his home and seized his phone and laptop computers. Police said they found 123 images and three videos of child sex abuse on the phone. Some of the images were of very young children.
Additionally, officials said that a rug pictured in one of the photos matched a rug in his classroom at Mayport Elementary School. According to the complaint, he distributed at least four videos of child sex abuse to other Kik users.
Hazouri is due in court on September 11. If convicted, he faces a minimum of 5 years in federal prison and a potential lifetime of supervised release.
