Lonnie D. Pearson

A Missouri man was sentenced this week in Monroe County Circuit Court to four years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for possession of child pornography stemming from a 2015 arrest on Interstate 255 in Columbia.

Lonnie Dean Pearson, 55, of Kirkwood, Mo., was given credit for 200 days already served in jail and also fined $1,949 in addition to his four-year prison term.

Pearson was arrested Nov. 7, 2015, on a St. Louis County probation violation and for possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.

During the I-255 traffic stop, police said Pearson consented to searches of his vehicle and all contents in his possession, including a cell phone. His phone was turned over to the Metropolitan Enforcement Group of Southwestern Illinois multi-jurisdictional drug task force.

At that time, MEGSI found pornographic images on Pearson’s phone and decided to involve the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Task Force. A detailed analysis of the phone by task force investigators determined that Pearson’s phone contained sexually explicit images of adults into which the faces of children were digitally inserted onto the bodies, police said.

Pearson was subsequently charged with possessing child porn.