A Florida second-grade teacher has been charged with child pornography distribution
A federal court criminal complaint says over 220 pictures and videos led to a Jacksonville-area second-grade teacher being charged with knowing distribution of child pornography.
The complaint, filed Friday as Jacksonville Beach resident Thomas Hazouri was arrested, says that collection breaks down this way: 123 photos and three videos on Hazouri’s iPhone XR and 119 pictures of “child erotica or age-difficult pornography” on Hazouri’s Apple MacBook Pro.
Hazouri, 40, is a second-grade teacher at Duval County Public Schools’ Mayport Elementary in Atlantic Beach. As for the obvious question, the complaint didn’t indicate that any of the child pornography Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office investigators say they have found featured Mayport students.
The complaint does describe two photos of a Mayport student found in Hazouri’s account on Kik, a messaging app that commonly appears in child pornography cases because it’s free and protects anonymity. In both photos, the girl lies on her stomach in Hazouri’s classroom and the pictures “focus on her clothed bottom and the area between her legs.”
A search of a school system-issued Lenovo laptop in Hazouri’s possession hadn’t been finished when the complaint was filed.
A May 1 cybertip from MediaLab/Kik said account “mybfsgaynotme” uploaded suspected child porn on March 26. One of the two email addresses given to Kik for the account: tommyhazouri@gmail.com.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office eventually found, the complaint says, 70 files of child pornography in that Google account and 19 photos and 45 videos in the Kik account. On Aug. 6, the complaint says, police arrived at Hazouri’s home with a search warrant while he was home with a woman and a 4-year-old child.
The complaint says Hazouri told detectives, “I don’t mess with computers that way,” called the search “so embarrassing” and insisted, “I don’t mess with kids like that.”
This story was originally published September 10, 2020 at 6:36 AM with the headline "A Florida second-grade teacher has been charged with child pornography distribution."
