11-year-old spots airport worker’s phone filming them in bathroom stall, Florida cops say

An airport employee was arrested after he was accused of recording people, including an 11-year-old, under bathroom stalls, according to a Florida sheriff’s office.

Detectives began investigating on June 30 after two people at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport said they saw a cellphone being held under the stall door while they were using a bathroom, according to a news release from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. The St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport is about 100 miles southwest of Orlando.

One of the people was an 11-year-old child, who said they saw their image on the phone screen, “presumably via the device’s front-facing camera,” the release says.

Detectives discovered that a 46-year-old man, who was employed with a food and beverage company inside the airport, had been in the men’s bathroom and used the stall next to both of the alleged victims.

When detectives interviewed him, he told them that he had been “using his phone while sitting on the toilet, but denied accessing the phone’s camera or using it to record people in the bathroom.”

Detectives executed a search warrant and found more than 160 photographs of people’s legs taken under bathroom stalls, the release says. Detectives also found that he had used his camera and photo gallery on his phone at the same time that both of the alleged victims said they were in the bathroom.

The man is charged with two counts of video voyeurism - one with a victim under 16 years old, according to the sheriff’s office.

This story was originally published September 9, 2022 at 7:09 PM with the headline "11-year-old spots airport worker’s phone filming them in bathroom stall, Florida cops say."