Police have arrested a Paso Robles man on suspicion of distributing child pornography after two women running a private sting turned over images they said he had e-mailed them.
Thomas Avery Hillman, 44, was arrested around 11:40 a.m. Monday at Wilson's Bowling Lanes on Spring Street, where he was a longtime employee, Paso Robles Detective Ty Lewis said.
Hillman was booked into County Jail and remained there Tuesday in lieu of posting $10,000 bail.
Police also served a search warrant Monday at Hillman's home, in the 3100 block of Spring Street, and seized personal computer equipment, peripheral hardware and software, which will be sent to a forensic examiner for review.
Lewis said there is evidence that Hillman has sent images of child pornography to other people. He declined to elaborate.
Detectives have submitted the case to the District Attorney's Office, and Hillman is to be arraigned today in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court.
The women, who are from Bakersfield and Idaho, work with Perverted-Justice.com, a group "of citizen-contributors who enter regional chat rooms as underage kids and lurk there, waiting for contact from adults attempting to solicit children," according to the site.
The women called police Jan. 4 to report they had met a man they believed was from Paso Robles in an Internet teen chat room, Lewis said.
He said the women turned over more than 100 images Hillman allegedly sent that depicted pre-teenage boys and girls engaged in sexual activity, plus transcripts of the four online conversations they said they had with him during the last two weeks.
