A Yucaipa man compounded his problems on Thursday, March 6, when he injured himself while trying to destroy a hard drive containing illegal images of children as Redlands police closed in to arrest him, the Redlands Police Department said.
Police showed up at the 26-year-old man’s trailer in a mobile home park in the 13000 block of 5th Street in Yucaipa around 12:30 p.m. to serve a search warrant. Seeing this, the man drilled through a hard drive but injured his fingers doing so, a police news release said.
He was arrested but declined treatment for his injuries.
Detectives had recovered more than 100 files of images of child sexual abuse from the electronic devices they seized as of Friday, the release said.
The man was booked into West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga on suspicion of possession of obscene matter, distributing obscene matter and destroying evidence, according to the San Bernardino County jail log. He has a March 10 court date.
Police ask anyone with information about this case or incidents of child sexual abuse to call Detective Dale Peters at 909-798-7659.
The investigation was part of an ongoing operation by the Internet Crimes Against Children’s regional task force known as Online Guardian 2.0.
