State troopers arrested a Soldotna man after he was accused of exchanging explicit text and photo messages with a 14-year-old girl. He told officers that he believed her to be 15 or 16 according to court documents.
Brian Jones, 30, was arrested Tuesday at Soldotna’s Peninsula Center Mall on two charges of enticing a minor online, three charges of child pornography possession, two charges of distributing indecent material to a minor, and two charges of unlawful exploitation of a minor.
In June, the Alaska State Troopers office in Soldotna received a report that Jones was exchanging sexually explicit messages with a girl approximately 14 years old using Facebook’s messenger service, according to court documents. Troopers were alerted to the exchange by the victim’s sister, who provided the officers with prints of photographs sent between Jones and the victim, as well as screen captures of sexual messages exchanged around the first of April.
On June 11, investigators Kyle Carson and Jack LeBlanc attained a search warrant for Jones’ residence.
While conducting the search the following day, the two also interviewed Jones, who admitted to having sexual conversations with the victim, and on two occasions exchanging sexually explicit images. Subsequently, items taken from Jones’ residence were searched by the State Troopers Technical Crimes Unit in Anchorage, which discovered nude images of the victim on Jones’ cell phone and pornographic images of other female children on Jones’ laptop.
Jones is currently awaiting arraignment in Wildwood pretrial facility. If convicted, he faces up to five years of imprisonment for each of his four Class C felonies, and a prison term of not more than 10 years for each of his class B felonies.
Reach Ben Boettger at ben.boettger@peninsulaclarion.com
