Ohio

Brock Turner May Have Photographed Victim, Sent Pictures to Friends: Court Docs

Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a campus dumpster, may have taken photos of his victim during the assault and sent them to friends, according to prosecutors.

Court documents state that after Turner was arrested in January 2015, detectives saw a notification on the disgraced swimmer's cell phone that read "WHOS T-- IS THAT" (sic). The notification was from a GroupMe messaging app, and according to court documents, the sender was identified as a fellow Stanford swimmer.

Prosecutors believe based on time stamps that Turner photographed the victims breasts during the attack, in which he sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman near a dumpster. Two good Samaritans spotted Turner assaulting the woman and restrained him until police arrived.

A search warrant issued for Turner's phone failed to turn up any photos of his victim, but detectives cautioned that third-party messaging applications allow for members of a group chat to delete messages. Photos taken with the third-party apps are not typically stored on cell phones, making them hard to retrieve and trace.

"Detectives were unable to locate the text from the "Group me" application or any photos related to the text," prosecutors wrote in the People's Sentencing Memorandum.

Turner's cell phone records have been making waves for text and picture exchanges that show a history of marijuana use and references to ecstasy. Those records are in contrast to what the Ohio native told the judge about his party habits.

Turner was sentenced to 6 months in county jail for his crimes. More than 1 million people have signed petitions calling for the judge who handed down that decision to be removed, alleging that he showed unfair bias in favor of Turner.

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