A registered sex offender was found to have thousands of images of child pornography after a police officer saw him watching a pornographic video, the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office said.
Leandro Palacio-Gregorio, 48, was convicted of five counts of sexual exploitation of children on Jan. 7. The jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts after a three-day trial.
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A Gwinnett County police officer found Palacio-Gregorio watching a video in his car outside an extended stay hotel on Dec. 10, 2016. Upon closer look, the officer noticed the video was child pornography, the DA’s office said. Palacio-Gregorio hid the phone when he noticed the officer, and when the officer asked what he was doing on the phone he said he was “watching videos,” the DA’s office said.
Palacio-Gregorio was arrested for the child porn video.The officer ran Palacio-Gregorio’s driver’s license and found that Palacio-Gregorio was a registered sex offender. Palacio-Gregorio pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual battery in 2010 in DeKalb County. He impregnated a 14-year-old cousin when he was 38 years old, the DA’s office said.
A forensic inspection of Palacio-Gregorio’s phone by the Gwinnett County Police Department found about 8,000 images, the “overwhelming amount of which were child pornography,” the DA’s office said. At trial, the cousin Palacio-Gregorio was convicted of abusing in 2010 said Palacio-Gregorio also took photos of her, the DA’s office said.
Palacio-Gregorio testified that the phone was not his and a coworker left it in his car.
Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Karen Beyers sentenced Palacio-Gregorio to 100 years, with the first 99 years to be served in prison. Beyers said she “hoped to protect the public” from Palacio-Gregorio for as long as possible, the DA’s office said.
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