BELLEAIR – A St. Petersburg man accused of filming young girls is out on bail after turning himself in Aug. 23 at the Pinellas County Jail on an arrest warrant.
On Feb. 11, at about 6:30 a.m., a Belleair police officer stopped a motorist for running a stop sign in Belleair, Chief Tom Edwards said. The officer found a male, 46, driving a car with three young females, 8, 9, and 11. The man was not related to them.
The officer found out that the man kept the youths out all night long, taking them to dinner with the mother of one of the children. The mother let him take them out to a movie and elsewhere.
“They had been to Clearwater Beach, and he films these girls frequently and puts them up on YouTube,” Edwards said.
The officer asked the man what he was videoing, and the subject showed him a piece of the video he had taken out at Clearwater Beach. The officer heard a comment where the subject is asking one of the girls to show her breast.
“That roused his curiosity,” Edwards said.
Edwards and detectives interviewed the subject and “in the course of looking through some of his videos and stuff, it became very evident he was into filming young girls and was grooming them so that he could do future acts,” Edwards said.
Police conducted an investigation; the Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney’s Office filed charges and issued a warrant for his arrest that was served Aug. 23. The suspect learned of the warrant and turned himself into the Pinellas County Jail. He has been identified as Phillip Porvaznik of St. Petersburg. He was booked into the jail and released on a $15,000 bond.
The warrant was for selling and distributing harmful material to minors, he said.
“If there is any other victims out there, we certainly would like to be aware of it,” Edwards said.
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