John Daniel Ferguson

THOMASVILLE — Videos depicting children involved in sexual activities were found on a Thomas County Central High School student’s school email account, according to authorities.

“There were some disturbing videos that showed up in his email,” Lt. Tim Watkins, Thomas County Sheriff’s Office chief investigator, said.

The sheriff’s office was notified by the school.

The student on whose email the videos were found is John Daniel Ferguson, 18, 727 Foxcroft Dr. Ferguson is charged with sexual exploitation of children.

“We don’t know how he obtained them. … We did a search of his phone and found more,” the investigator said.

“They depicted children in very inappropriate activities,” Watkins added.

Children depicted were under 12.

“The school’s email service notified school administration and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Kids,” Watkins said.

The Thomas County School System subscribes to a filtering system that monitors for inappropriate content files saved to school system devices or to school system maintained computer servers on the Internet. The filtering system also monitors correspondence on school-system issued email accounts for inappropriate content, said Dr. Dusty Kornegay, Thomas County School System superintendent.

The filtering service notified the school district of potentially illegal content in a student’s computer file.

“It is our understanding that a third party outside the school system shared a file containing inappropriate and likely illegal content with a student in our system, and the student accessed the file using his school system-issued account,” Kornegay said. 

The filtering system notified the school system of the inappropriate content, and the school district referred the matter to the sheriff’s office for investigation.

“During the investigation, the student withdrew from the Thomas County School System, with disciplinary action pending,” Kornegay said. “If the student were to attempt to re-enroll in the school system, he would be subject to a school disciplinary tribunal. The student is no longer enrolled in the Thomas County School System.” 

Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 1820