Home on Beechwood Drive Raided in Child Pornography Probe

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:35 p.m.

The Ohio Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Crime Investigation executed a search warrant Tuesday at a Mentor home as part of a child pornography probe.

CBI and FBI agents raided 7272 Beechwood Drive Tuesday morning, removing a computer and other materials. Attorney general spokeswoman Jill Del Greco said an arrest has not been made in Mentor, though others were arrested in other Ohio cities as part of a larger investigation.

The raid was part of a statewide probe by the Crimes Against Children unit. In a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Attorney General Mike DeWine said search warrants were executed in the "four corners of the state," including the one in Mentor. In each case, an individual had been sharing pornographic images of children on the Internet.

The victims were all 11 years old or younger, Nicole Dehner, director of the Crimes Against Children unit, said. The unit does not believe any of the children in the images are local.

Mentor Police Lt. Tim Allen said the city department worked with state investigators during the raids, but that he knows nothing about the case or suspect. DeWine said the case would soon be turned over to the Lake County Prosecutor's office, though prosecutor Charles Coulson said that has not happened yet.

"What we anticipate happening that it will presented to a grand jury," Del Greco said of the Mentor case.

DeWine said the arrests emphasize that the state has zero tolerance for child pornography.

"We're going after you, we're going to catch you and we're going to put you in jail, which is where you belong," DeWine said. "This is something that society should simply not tolerate.

"This is a despicable crime."

The attorney general has opened 170 cases in the Crimes Against Children program, which also include rapes, human trafficking and sexual offender registration violations.

The charges in the probe are expected to include pandering obscenity involving a minor and pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor, both second-degree felonies; possessing images, a fourth-degree felony; and sharing or selling images, which is a second-degree felony, Dehner said.

"There are a lot of people in Ohio doing this at this very moment," DeWine said. "My message is this is just the beginning. If you think you can just sit in your home and look at your computer and transmit pictures of child pornography, of little children, and not get caught, you're wrong.

"You're going to get caught."