HOLMES BEACH – A Manatee county resident and employee of the Island Grill has been arrested by Manatee County Sheriff’s deputies and charged with 26 counts of possession of child pornography, a felony, based on two cyber-tips from Dropbox Inc.
Owen Hagan, 27, also was in violation of his probation from a 2020 DUI involving property damage after missing a recent court date in May, according to a police report.
Deputies learned that Hagan had recently moved to Florida from Ohio to live with his mother in a Palmetto mobile home park, where they executed a search warrant on March 17. The warrant included an IP address provided by the cyber-tip from Dropbox Inc. advising that a user named Owen Hagan had uploaded at least 11 video files, 10 of which depicted child pornography. When police arrived, Hagan’s mother advised deputies that Hagan was at the residence in his bedroom.
During the search, Hagan’s iPhone 6 was confiscated by police after he declined to allow officers to look through it, although he had previously provided the password upon request. A further search of Hagan’s bedroom resulted in no more electronic devices being found. A later forensic search of Hagan’s phone found multiple visits to dropbox.com with emails being used that matched email addresses found on the phone. It was also found that the user of the phone visited multiple known child pornography sites. In total, 26 files involving sexually explicit images and videos of children as young as 3 years old were discovered on the iPhone, according to the report.
Hagan is currently in the Manatee County jail on a $650,000 bond and arraignment is set for Friday, July 23 at the Manatee County Judicial Center.
