Disgraced Las Vegas police officer, 25, who pleaded guilty to sharing massive child porn collection ‘killed himself’
Las Vegas NV Aug 19 2017 A Las Vegas police officer who was arrested last summer on multiple child pornography charges has died in an apparent suicide, one day before his sentencing last month.
Ruben Delgadillo, 25, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of receiving child pornography and was looking at a sentence of up to 45 years in prison.
At the time of his arrest in August 2016, local news outlets reported that Delgadillo, then aged 24, had used an app to share one of the largest collections of child pornography ever detected in Nevada.
Delgadillo admitted to investigators that he had a problem and felt guilty, likening his behavior to that of ‘hands-on’ child molesters, according to an arrest report cited by News3LV last year.
On July 24, one day before Delgadillo was scheduled to learn his fate, he was found dead in his bedroom. The Clark County Coroner’s Office has yet to announce Delgadillo’s official cause of death, but police sources tell Fox 5 Las Vegas the disgraced cop committed suicide by asphyxiation.
The results of Delgadillo’s autopsy are expected to be released within a few weeks.
Delgadillo joined the Las Vegas Metro police force in July 2015, assigned to the community policing division.
The case against Delgadillo began unfolding last year when detectives learned of a certain IP address from which prolific quantities of child pornography were being shared peer-to-peer. Delgadillo was eventually identified as the subscriber of two different but related IP addresses.
Investigators found more than two dozen videos, some of which depicted toddlers being sexually assaulted by men, the arrest report said.
On August 12, 2016, police arrived at Delgadillo’s home to execute a search warrant and took him into custody, charging him with five counts of possession of child pornography and one count of distribution.
During his initial interview, Delgadillo said he had only seen child pornography as a teen but denied ever downloading it. He later made a full confession, admitting to storing child pornography on multiple devices and seeking out hard-core videos featuring children.
In March, Delgadillo accepted a plea deal and was released from jail pending his sentencing, which had been set for July 25.
