J.D. Gallop

FLORIDA TODAY

Cocoa police arrested a man suspected of keeping dozens of illicit images of underage children on his computer, a month after authorities said he used a phone app to search for runaway youth in a case that involved a lewd act.

Barry Gill Vest, 53, was charged with 175 counts of possession of child pornography today and ordered held on a $175,000 at the Brevard County Detention Center in Sharpes. Many of the illicit images involved multiple children, police report.

The case stems from an April 15 arrest involving the teen runaways, police said.

Police are also concerned that there may be other victims.

"He had a police scanner app on his cell phone and was listening when he heard that juveniles had run away from a facility," Matthews said. "He actually went out to the area searching for them, found them and enticed them back to his apartment where he plied them with alcohol and marijuana," Matthews said.

Officers obtained a search warrant to seize his computers and electronic devices and returned to his second story apartment to take him into custody today.

"We also had a number of complaints about him filming the kids. He lived on the second floor and had back window looked out over the swimming pool of the condominium complex where he lived. He's a very bad person."

In early April, police investigated the allegations from residents at the complex.

It was then that detectives were alerted by the two runaways that Vest had made contact with them.

Police then discovered that Vest used the smartphone app – typically found for .99 cents on iTunes - to monitor police traffic. Vest then personally went to the area to search for the teens himself, telling them when found them that officers were looking for them and to come with him, police reported. Police said Vest then took the teens back to his apartment and gave them marijuana and alcohol before performing an unspecified lewd act on one of them.

Vest was charged but bonded out following the April 15 arrest.

He will go before a judge for a first appearance on the new charges Saturday.