Cedar Park firefighter Jay Cortez, 51, was charged with possession and promotion of child pornography after his wife found images of child porn on his tablet, photographed them with her cellphone and turned the photos over to sheriff’s investigators in Hamilton County where the couple lives, according to an arrest affidavit.
Cortez, an 18-year veteran of the Cedar Park Fire Department, was charged with one count of possession of child pornography and two counts of promotion of child pornography.
Hamilton County Sheriff Justin Caraway and sheriff’s Lt. Ray Miller staked out the man’s home in Hamilton after the woman reported finding the porn Friday, the affidavit says.
He drove by twice in his white Chevrolet Camaro, but didn’t stop at the home, the affidavit says.
He later drove to Hamilton Fair Park where Caraway and Miller tried to approach him, but then he sped off, the affidavit says.
Later the investigators discovered that Cortez had returned home, and swapped the Camaro for his wife’s Buick, which they spotted at the intersection of Rice and Main and Hamilton, the affidavit says.
They pulled Cortez over and he agreed to go to the sheriff’s office where he admitted the tablet was his, admitted to looking at pornography at least three times a week when his wife and children weren’t home, and admitted to accessing pages with images of female children performing sex act son adults, the affidavit says.
“He admitted there was an ‘onion router’ on his tablet, which was the browser for ‘The Dark Web,’” the affidavit says.
Onion sites are pages on the dark web, or the Tor network, which is a series of nodes that allow anonymous, untraceable internet use.