A former Florida high school janitor has been sentenced to 60 years after he was found guilty of filming students in the girl’s restroom.
Judge Wendy W. Berger sentenced Derremy Jerrel Walker to 60 years behind bars and he will spend the rest of his life on supervised release after his term ends, according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office on September 22. Additionally, he will be required to register as a sex offender. In June, Walker, 31, was found guilty by a federal jury on “two counts of using, or attempting to use, children to produce sexually explicit videos,” according to the press release.
The incident occurred when Walker was working as a “janitor at Oviedo High School in November 2019 when two 15-year-old female students discovered an actively recording cellphone hidden under the sink in a student bathroom stall,” the United States Attorney’s Office stated.
The phone had been recording for 15 minutes before the students observed the phone actively recording while they occupied the restroom. “The girls took the phone to school administrators, who contacted the Oviedo Police Department,” the document states.
Authorities discovered that Walker had carried out the same act on two different occasions earlier in the month after they conducted an in-depth analysis of his phone, the United States Attorney’s office stated.
“In each of the three instances, Walker had angled the cellphone’s camera to capture images of the genitalia of those in the stall,” the press release reads. “School administrators and law enforcement officials were able to identify 8 of the 12 students unknowingly captured in the videos that Walker recorded.” Additionally, Walker had placed the phone in the faculty bathroom earlier in the month to record staff members according to the United States Attorney’s Office.
“Mr. Walker did more than just produce horror; he stole the innocence and trust of these young victims,” said FBI Tampa Division Special Agent in Charge Michael McPherson in the press release. “We are pleased with the sentence handed down in this case and will continue efforts to protect the children in our communities from sexual exploitation and abuse,” he added.
In the immediate aftermath of the crime, Walker was dismissed as the school’s janitor and was barred from school property according to NBC subsidiary News Channel 8. He was initially arrested for the crimes on February 25, 2020, and was charged with eight counts of video voyeurism on a person under the age of 16, and one count of voyeurism on a person over the age of 19 First Coast News reported.