Job Corps student arrested on child porn charges

PALMER — A student enrolled in local post-high-school training program was arrested last week after allegedly child pornography was allegedly found in his dorm room.

According to an affidavit Sgt. Lance Ketterling filed in the case against David Chandler, 21, the allegations came to light Feb. 29 when the director of Alaska Job Corps called to say a student might be in possession of child pornography.

Apparently the night before, Chandler’s former roommate had asked to borrow a thumb drive full of regular pornography from Chandler and found 29 images that appeared to depict child pornography, Ketterling wrote.

“Job Corps staff located Chandler and asked if he had any other thumb drives or computers,” Ketterling wrote.

Chandler handed over five thumb drives and his computer. Staff locked up his room, and in the morning summoned police. Ketterling wrote that when he arrived, staff booted up the computer for him.

“I saw three photographs of what appeared to be, based on my training and experience, girls well under the age of 18 years who were nude,” Ketterling wrote. “There were more images in the file; however, after seeing three of them I told the staff they could close the file.”

Ketterling wrote that he interviewed Chandler’s former roommate before sitting down to question Chandler.

“Chandler said that he put the images on this thumb drive from two CDs he found in a trash can near the city of North Pole, which is where he is from. Chandler said he once found a nice TV in a trash can and he now searches through them to find things of value,” Ketterling wrote.

Since then, Chandler told the sergeant that he had forgotten they were on there. Police searched Chandler’s room at Job Corps and came away with four floppy discs, a USB hard drive, two cameras, a 512-megabyte iPod, 25 recordable CDs, a computer and a flip cellphone. The searched turn up “over 30 images” of child porn. Chandler had estimated that the initial thumb drive contained around 40 images of child pornography.

Chandler was arrested March 1 at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. He was charged with distribution of child porn and jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on $20,000 bail.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.