A Hoquiam man has been charged with possessing child pornography after a search warrant at his residence revealed more than 500 images and almost 100 videos depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit poses or acts, according to Hoquiam Police Chief Jeff Myers.
Sidney Jacob Koch, 50, a longtime employee of Grays Harbor Transit, was arrested on Oct. 11 and charged in Grays Harbor District Court with possessing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct in the first degree. He was released on $25,000 bail and is scheduled to appear again in District Court on Oct. 28, according to Chief Criminal Deputy Katie Svoboda.
Court documents state that the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office received a tip from the Seattle Police Department on May 27 that six images portraying young boys engaged in sexual acts had been uploaded to an email account through a certain IP address. The tip was originally provided by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Sheriff’s Office detectives obtained a warrant for the IP and email address on June 2 and obtained information from that warrant on June 27, when it was discovered that the IP address belonged to a resident of Hoquiam. The Sheriff’s Office then turned the case over to the Hoquiam Police Department. During this time, there were continued tips that child pornography was being uploaded on the IP address.
On Sept. 8, Hoquiam Police obtained a search warrant for the property belonging to the IP address and determined that Koch was living in a trailer behind a rental house. The warrant was served on the trailer and his car on Sept. 9. During the course of the search warrant, police secured computers, thumb drives, hard drives and CDs. After confiscating the items, police then filed a warrant to have three laptops, two thumb drives and SD cards forensically analyzed by the Bellevue Crime Lab. The items were sent to Bellevue due to a backlog of cases at the state’s forensic lab. The images were identified as child pornography by the lab and several of them had already been verified as so by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Myers said Hoquiam police are unsure whether any of the victims are local.
It is up to the Grays Harbor Prosecutor’s Office whether the case will be sent to Superior Court, according to Svoboda.
If anyone has information regarding this case, they’re encouraged to contact Detective Sgt. Shane Krohn or Detective David Blundred by calling 360-532-0892. The website for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is www.missingkids.com.
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