St. George man accused of possessing more than 300 child sex abuse images

ST. GEORGE — A St. George man was indicted in federal court for allegedly possessing more than 300 images of child sexual abuse material.

Adam Richard Roettger Jr., 26, was charged Oct. 20 with receipt and possession of child sexual abuse material. He made his first court appearance Monday.

Roettger's residence was searched on June 17 after his fingerprints were found on a truck that had been recently burglarized, federal prosecutors said in a motion for detention. Items that had been stolen in the burglary were located and his phone was seized, prosecutors said.

Police received a warrant for the phone and searched the device, discovering 16 videos and 17 images of child sex abuse material, according to the detention motion. During a subsequent search of his residence, police recovered additional electronic devices, including a hard drive, a computer tower and another cell phone. In total, approximately 316 video and image files containing child sexual abuse material were located on the devices.

Police also discovered chat threads on his devices where he allegedly discussed trading and sharing child sexual abuse material. He also received a file of child sexual abuse material in at least one chat, prosecutors said.

One of his devices showed that Roettger had sent his girlfriend a video file on June 10 that "depicts a Telegram chat containing dozens of videos of obvious child sexual abuse material," the motion for detention states.

He was originally charged in June in Utah's 5th District Court in two cases, the first of which charged him with six misdemeanors for vehicle burglary. That case is still ongoing.

For the other state case, he was charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony. That state case was dismissed Tuesday, however, after his federal indictment was made public. Roettger has a trial scheduled for the federal case in January.