A Lake County Sheriff’s Office canine this week helped investigators find evidence that led to the arrest of a suspect in a child pornography case in Beach Park.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office said Canine Tera, short for “terabyte,” which is a computer reference, assisted with a recent search warrant.
The warrant was executed early in the morning on Monday at a manufactured home community in Beach Park.
The warrant was for a child pornography case.
Sheriff’s officials said they began investigating after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Tera sniffed around the home and found several pieces of electronics used to store data.
A 17-year-old juvenile was petitioned to juvenile court for acquiring and possessing child pornography.
“K9 Tera, our electronic detection K9 has been successful finding hidden electronics!” the sheriff’s office said.
Tera, a Labrador Retriever who is an Electronic Storage Detection (ESD) canine, joined the department in August 2022.
She is specially trained to locate items with an internal storage device, such as cell phones, tablets, computers, flash drives, SD cards and other electronic items.
Tera was donated to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office by Operation Underground Railroad, which is a nonprofit organization.