LOGAN — A 49-year-old Logan man has been arrested for allegedly downloading hundreds of images of child pornography, according to law enforcement. Brady Lynn Thurston was booked Tuesday into the Cache County Jail after officers served a warrant to his home.
According to an arrest affidavit, Logan City Police officers received cyber-tip in September from a cloud-based storage provider for Verizon wireless. They reported a user had uploaded files to their servers containing depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
The company provided officers with 79 files believed to be child sexual abuse material. Officers reviewed the material and found all but one was child pornography.
Police were able to determine Thurston was the owner of the user account by tracking his phone number and IP address, according to court documents.
Officers were able to secure a warrant to obtain the rest of the material allegedly saved to the account. They received multiple folders from the company, with an additional several hundred images of child sexual abuse material.
The images depicted children ranging from approximately 4 to 16-years-old. The kids were “in various states of undress and in various forms of sexual positions,” police wrote in the probable cause statement.
Oct. 29, officers served a warrant to Thurston’s home, where he was living with two other family members. They seized his cell phone and laptop computer, for further inspection.
Thurston reportedly refused to answer questions from police and requested an attorney. He was later booked into jail.
According to court records, Thurston was arraigned Wednesday in Logan’s 1st District Court. He was charged with 20 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony.
Thurston was ordered to remain temporarily in jail without bail and appear again in court Nov. 4. He could face more than 15 years in prison, if convicted.
Individuals arrested and charged in complaints are presumed innocent unless or until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in court.