GAINESVILLE, Ga. — An ex-teacher in Gwinnett and Hall counties was arrested last week on over 100 counts of sharing and possessing child sexual abuse videos, the Hall County Sheriff's Office said.
Blake Edwards, 32, previously taught for almost a year at Mountain View High School and before that for several years at Riverside Preparatory Academy.
Gwinnett County Schools told 11Alive he was hired on July 24 last year at Mountain View High as a physics teacher, and he resigned on May 23 this year. Riverside Prep told 11Alive he was employed there without incident from 2019-2023.
The Hall County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook that he was arrested at his home in Hall County last Friday night without incident and booked into the county jail. The sheriff's office said he was wanted on 108 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor -- two of those counts for publishing videos of child sexual abuse material on a peer-to-peer sharing platform and the other 106 for being in possession of such videos. The sheriff's office said the 106 videos he was allegedly in possession of were found on two external hard drives found at his home.
"Investigators first became aware of Edwards’ online activity in March when he shared the two CSAM (child sexual abuse material) videos. They executed search warrants for the residence on May 14, and seized multiple electronic devices, including the two hard drives where the videos were discovered. Edwards was not home at the time the warrants were executed," the sheriff's office said on Facebook. "There is no evidence any of the CSAM was created locally."
