A SWAT team arrested a Gresham man on Wednesday after officers found child sexual abuse material and explosives in the man’s home while serving a search warrant.
Zachary Lawson, 44, is accused of first- and second-degree encouraging child sexual abuse, second-degree possession of child pornography, second-degree online sexual corruption of a child, coercion and possession and manufacture of a destructive device, the Gresham Police Department said in a statement.
Police said they started investigating Lawson after receiving tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that someone at an address in the 500 block of Southeast 19th Street in Gresham was distributing “sexually explicit images and videos of children.”
Gresham police’s special victims team identified the suspected distributor of abuse material as Lawson and gathered enough evidence to obtain a search warrant, police said.
When East Metro special weapons and tactics officers searched the house and found “multiple homemade explosive devices,” they called in the Metropolitan Explosive Disposal Unit and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, police said.
Lawson was previously convicted of third-degree theft in 2014, according to court documents.
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