A 21-year-old Texas man was arrested on Wednesday for child pornography after his relative turned him in to the police.
Bexar County Sheriff’s Office’s Sheriff Javier Salazar said that Tristen McLelland was found to have “several thousands” of images of children being “brutally sexually assaulted.”
The relative was cleaning McLelland’s bedroom on March 3 and bumped into the man’s laptop, according to Salazar. When the computer turned on, the relative saw the disturbing images and called the police.
An investigation by BCSO and ChildSafe found images on the laptop of sexual abuse of children as young as 2 years old and up to 9 years old.
“This is one of the more disturbing cases I heard in quite some time,” he added.
Salazar said an investigation found evidence McLelland was selling and trading the images on Discord, a popular messaging application. He was also allegedly selling videos of people having sex with animals.
“I think we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of the depravity in this case,” Salazar said after telling reporters there may be other charges added as a result of the ongoing investigation.
He went on to say that investigators didn’t believe McLelland had any access to children but that police were asking for help from the public if they had any information related to the accusations.
McLelland faces several charges, including possession of child pornography, possession with intent to promote child pornography, possession for wholesale promotion of child pornography, and bestiality.
“I’ve been doing this job a long time,” said Salazar. “But it’s pretty disturbing to know that there’s people out there.”
He said they found about 4,000 images of abuse on the man’s laptop. McLelland had no prior criminal history, and Salazar said that he had been living in his car for some time.
News video showed McLelland being led in handcuffs into a patrol car. When the reporter asked him if he was sorry for what he did, he replied that he didn’t remember what he had done.
After that, the reporter asked McLelland if he had anything to say, but he was completely silent and stared at the camera.
Here’s a local news report about the arrest:
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