Marshall County Prosecuting Attorney Joe Canestraro announces that on Friday, October 16, 2026, Devon Eckard, 29 years old of Cameron, West Virginia, was found guilty of the felony offense of Distribution and Exhibiting of Material Depicting Minors engaged in Sexually Explicit Conduct after a two-day jury trial.
Eckard was found guilty by the jury to have possessed over 600 videos/images of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on his cell phone. Of the CSAM found on the defendant’s cell phone the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was able to confirm that 1,024 of the videos/images were of already identifiable CSAM material. NCMEC was able to determine that of the children in the material the defendant possessed, 164 were children already identified by NCMEC.
The investigation involved a cell phone seized from a traffic stop in Glen Dale, West Virginia, wherein a large amount of a controlled substance was found in the defendant’s vehicle. A subsequent search warrant and forensic examination of the cell phone identified that the CSAM material was concealed in two concealment apps on the phone and that a file-sharing app was used to download the material on four different dates in 2023-2024.
Prosecutor Canestraro would like to thank the Glen Dale Police Department and Sgt. William Whitelatch of the Moundsville Police Department who is trained in forensic analysis of cell phones and computers for their extraordinary work in investigating the case.
Canestraro wants the public to know, “These cases are not victimless crimes. Individuals who possess these materials are exploiting real children living somewhere in the world we all live in who have been sexually abused by knowing adults and then photographed and filmed. When a person then hunts for this material on the web, they continue the harm to those children and all children. “Any time we can get this material off the street and have NCMEC identify more children and more of this material aids in investigating future crimes of this nature”
Prosecutor Canestraro would also like to thank Assistant Prosecutor Andrea Poling for her dedicated preparation and work in trying the case to the jury with an assist from Canestraro.
Eckard was immediately remanded to the Northern Regional Jail and Correctional Facility with no post-conviction bond as required by West Virginia Code. Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date.
The case was prosecuted by Marshall County Assistant Prosecutor Andrea Poling and Prosecutor Joe Canestraro.
