Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Police probe child-sex case

A Henderson man has been jailed on more than 50 counts of child pornography and molestation charges for allegedly paying underage girls to come to his trailer to perform sex acts while he videotaped the encounters.

David William Ashman, 56, is being held at Clark County Detention Center without bail. Metro Police arrested him last Thursday.

Metro and Henderson Police are conducting a joint investigation into the case.

The alleged incidents occurred in the Henderson Trailer Haven at 233 S. Cholla St. near Lake Mead Parkway at Boulder Highway and began about five years ago, according to the police report obtained by the Sun.

Police began their investigation about two weeks ago when a police informant gave a Metro officer a videotape showing a man engaged in sexual conduct with two girls believed to be 13 to 15 years old. The informant said he received the tape from an anonymous source who had borrowed some videos from Ashman, the man allegedly shown on the tape.

Ashman was shown giving the girls money either before or after the sex acts.

Police located one of the girls, who is 15 years old, at the trailer park. She said she had sexual contact with Ashman about seven times in the past three or four years. She was 11 or 12 when the activity first occurred, she told police.

She told police Ashman forced her to commit the acts, the report says. The girl also told police about another girl in the trailer park, about 10 to 12 years old, who had obtained methamphetamine from Ashman and also had sexual contact with him.

Police obtained a warrant and searched Ashman's trailer on Thursday. Officers found the suspected components of a meth lab in the bathroom, including glassware, plastic funnels, a hot plate and chemicals. Ashman allegedly told police had been using an Internet recipe to try to extract methamphetamine from over-the-counter cold medicines.

Officers also found seven guns in the trailer, including a sawed-off shotgun, the report says. Ashman, who told police he had been convicted of burglary in California, is prohibited from possessing weapons.

When police told him they had seen a video depicting him having sexual contact with two girls, he began to cry and said he was "a monster," the report says.

He allegedly said he "didn't know why he is acting this way toward young females and that he needs to go to prison so he is off the street," adding that he would be "taken care of in prison."

Police asked Ashman about the younger girl that the 15-year-old had mentioned, and he told them that girl is 11 or 12 and that his involvement with her began when she was 10 years old, according to the report.

Officers found 47 explicit photographs of girls at Ashman's trailer, including photographs of the ones he allegedly molested, the report says.

Police found photos of Ashman engaged in encounters with a third girl who appeared to be nine or 10 years old. He told police he had met her at a park and asked her to come back to his trailer.

Ashman said he had many downloaded child pornography images on his computer hard drive, the report says.

He said he had not engaged in sexual conduct with any additional girls.

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