George Shore, his brother, said he is innocent and a jury trial will prove that.
“Our family is anxious for trial because at the end of this trial everybody in the community will know exactly what we know, which is that my brother is innocent of all these charges,” George Shore said. “Everybody in this community who knows him knows him to be a good man.”
The Champaign County Sheriff’s Office has released few details of the case, which deputies began investigating in 2011, according to court records.
The 34 charges relate to 10 images John Shore is accused of downloading onto a computer between January 2011 and June 2012, Champaign County Prosecutor Kevin Talebi said.
A defendant can be charged several different ways, Talebi said. The prosecution can charge a suspect with multiple charges related to the same image that differ in severity, he explained, and a jury can decide which, if any, of the charges he or she may have violated.
The charges range in severity from a fifth-degree felony that includes a six- to 12-month sentence, to a second-degree felony with a maximum sentence of eight years.
If convicted of the highest charge on each of the 10 images, John Shore could face up to 80 years in jail, Talebi said.
Investigators said they obtained the images from a computer associated with the suspect. None of the images were of local children. Specialists from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations aided sheriff’s investigators with getting the images off the computer, which they said took time.
Linda Scott lives near St. Paris and said she’s not surprised to hear this could happen in her community, but was happy to hear the sheriff’s office is tracking down people accused of exploiting children.
“You hear in a small town how things go on that you say would never happen in your town, but it does,” Scott said.
Shore is scheduled to be arraigned in the Champaign County Common Pleas Court on July 23.
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