Lost cell phone ends in child porn arrest of Stanwood man

A cellphone found by the side of the road in Seattle leads to an arrest for child porn.

A driver spotted the phone one day last week along the shoulder of Highway 99 in Seattle and stopped the next day and picked it up. He tried to identify the owner of the apparently lost phone and also checked the phone’s photo galleries. There, he found images of child porn.

Instead of trying to return the phone, the Herald reports the man gave it to police in Gig Harbor.

Detectives contacted the suspected owner and working undercover, arranged a meeting at a convenience store in Marysville, arresting a 59-year-old Stanwood man. The man told detectives the child porn just “popped up” on his home computer.

The man was booked into the Snohomish County Jail. He’s held on $250,000 bail as he waits on the filing of criminal charges.