The former maintenance director for Petersburg school district pleaded guilty last week to charges of possession, receipt and distribution of child pornography.
46-year-old Tye Leif Petersen changed his plea to guilty for three counts on June 23rd in a Juneau courtroom before Judge Timothy Burgess.
Petersen worked for the school district from 2002 through October of 2013. He resigned his job that month after Federal Bureau of Investigation agents searched his home. He was arrested in Juneau shortly after as he tried to leave for Seattle.
The case stemmed from an FBI investigation of a Yahoo email account in eastern Tennessee. The FBI found Petersen exchanged sexually explicit images and video via email. A search of his home turned up 11 found 11 CDs, five thumb drives, three hard drives and an Apple desktop all holding images of children. In total, the FBI found over 12-hundred images and more than three dozen videos depicting pre-pubescent minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Assistant U.S. attorney Jack Schmidt prosecuted the case. “He accepted responsibility for the conduct that we had against him in relation to the items, the child images we recovered from his computers and other digital media he had and it was part of the agreement that there is no sentencing agreement as to what sentence he’s going to receive and so basically everything’s out there on the table for the judge to make a determination.”
Petersen is scheduled for sentencing November 11th. He’s facing a minimum sentence of five years in jail. He could also be fined up to 250-thousand for each count and could be under supervision after jail time for five years or longer.
