Man who pleads guilty to collecting child porn was a Wichita school bus driver

November 16, 2010|by Eyewitness News

Booking photo

WICHITA, Kan. — A spokesperson for U.S.D 259 says Donald Schmidt used to drive a school bus for the district.

Schmidt was employed by Durham School Services. Durham provided school bus transportation for the district up until this school year.

The district tells Eyewitness News it was informed by Wichita police that Schmidt had a warrant out for his arrest back in March.

The district then tells us it notified Durham about Schmidt.

Schmidt was terminated because of the investigation.

The Wichita school district tells us it pulled video of Schmidt's routes and did not find anything suspicious.

A background check was done on Schmidt before he was hired at Durham, but it did not show any criminal record.

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A Wichita man pleaded guilty to distributing and possessing child pornography.

Federal prosecutors say, Donald W. Schmidt, 74, admitted in U.S. District Court in Wichita Monday that he collected more than 3 million child pornography photographs.

The U.S. Attorney also says Schmidt admitted that he was trading child pornography over the internet through a peer-to-peer program and to chatting online about molesting children.

Schmidt was arrested after a police investigator in Florida downloaded pornography from Schmidt's computer.

In March, Wichita police served a search warrant at Schmidt's home and found two computers and eleven banker's boxes containing CDs and DVDs. The U.S. Attorney says, forensics identified more than three million images of child pornography on the computers, disks and external drives.

Schmidt will be sentenced January 31, 2011.

He faces a penalty of not less than five years and not more than 20 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000 on the distribution charge and a maximum penalty of 10 years and a fine up to $250,000 on the possession

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