{"id":45751,"date":"2024-05-21T20:42:36","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T00:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=45751"},"modified":"2024-05-21T20:42:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-22T00:42:40","slug":"school-employee-accused-of-soliciting-children-in-jacksonville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/05\/21\/school-employee-accused-of-soliciting-children-in-jacksonville\/","title":{"rendered":"School employee accused of soliciting children in Jacksonville"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twenty-seven men have been arrested on charges of soliciting children on the internet to engage in sexual acts as part of Operation Valiant Knights, says Sheriff T.K. Waters.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"901\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/61Qe5mDTr1L._AC_SL1500_-1024x901.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45752\" style=\"width:419px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/61Qe5mDTr1L._AC_SL1500_-1024x901.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/61Qe5mDTr1L._AC_SL1500_-300x264.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/61Qe5mDTr1L._AC_SL1500_-768x676.jpg 768w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/61Qe5mDTr1L._AC_SL1500_.jpg 1487w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Among the suspects jailed in the five-day undercover sting is a former pro baseball player and a Duval County school district employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Waters announced the arrests at a news conference Monday, saying that the suspects range in age from 19 to 69.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"129\" height=\"173\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 129px) 100vw, 129px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/PEARCE-KEVIN-BRYAN.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45753\" style=\"width:267px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Duval County school maintenance worker Kevin Bryan Pearce is still jailed on $400,000 bail on five charges including coercing commercial sexual activity of an adult for human trafficking and traveling to meet a child after using a computer to solicit them, jail records show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">School officials said Pearce, hired in 2017, was a carpenter who did not report to any specific school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another suspect is former Boston Red Sox pitcher Austin Dean Maddox, still jailed on $300,000 bail after his arrest on April 28 on four charges, jail records show.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"620\" height=\"348\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Boston-Red-Sox-pitcher-Austin-Dean-Maddox.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45754\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maddox was a pitcher from Jacksonville who was drafted out the University of Florida in 2012, according to mlb.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of the men solicited sex from undercover officers posing as children via computer, Waters says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThese adults solicited sexual activity, and committed to engaging in sex acts with purported minors at pre-arranged locations,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce these adults arrived at these locations to meet these minors, they were immediately arrested. Twenty-four child predators who traveled to meet minors were arrested during this operation, and three additional predators were arrested after follow-up investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The undercover operation ran from April 24 to 28 and involved Jacksonville, St. Johns, and Clay County\u2019s sheriff\u2019s offices, plus the FBI and others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twenty-seven men have been arrested on charges of soliciting children on the internet to engage in sexual acts as part of Operation Valiant Knights, says Sheriff T.K. Waters. Among the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[8586],"class_list":["post-45751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-school-employee-accused-of-soliciting-children-in-jacksonville"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}