MIAMI – A Miami-Dade County teenager was arrested early Friday on charges of possessing child pornography after his father turned over his phones, concerned about gun posts to social media.
The arrest of Sean Mesa, 18, comes in a new era of heightened awareness of threats following the Parkland school shooting in which 17 people were killed.
The Miami Herald reports Mesa was known by local and federal authorities even before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting because of online threats and pictures of weapons. Mesa was originally never investigated over the posts on Instagram and Snapchat.
According to the report, the photos were forwarded to the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations' violent gang task after the shooting. When Mesa was approached by a Miami-Dade schools police detective at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School on Tuesday, he told the detective he "likes guns and it was his right to post on social media whatever he wished."
It was after that when Mesa's father turned over his son's iPhones to police. The U.S. Secret Service found a sexually explicit video involving a child under 10.
Mesa was arrested on one count each of possession and promotion of child pornography and improper display of a firearm.