Daytona Beach News
Daytona Beach, Fl. – According to the Daytona Beach Police Department, an investigation lead to the arrest of a 19-year-old man whose online account found more than 1,200 videos of pornography, many of them involving children.
Ethan Edlund, a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, surrendered to Chicago police on Wednesday and will eventually be extradited to Volusia County Jail, the department said.
Ginger Pinholster, associate vice president of news/research communications for ERAU, wrote in an email that Edlund had been barred from campus.
“He has been suspended, effective immediately, and will not be allowed to return to campus at this time,” Pinholster wrote.
“We were deeply pained to learn about this arrest. We certainly take all such matters extremely seriously,” she wrote in the email.
Police said its Advanced Technology and Cyber Crimes Unit began investigating Edlund in September 2020 after it received information that someone in the area was using a cloud storage service to store child porn.
The department said it was able to trace the account to which Edlund was linked, and found that the account had been accessed from the university and from Chicago when he was living with the family.
According to a news release, investigators were able to obtain a search warrant in December 2020 for his Google email account, which led to the discovery of more than 1,200 videos. Police said many of those pornographic videos were of children.
In March 2021, the department was able to obtain a search warrant for her dorm room, where they found more child porn videos on smartphones than they had collected.
Police said additional charges may be added as the investigation in the case is still underway.
Edlund has 20 criminal charges for possession of child pornography.
Stay tuned for more updates and Daytona Beach News.