Darrin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, was arrested in California on Wednesday on charges that he possessed more than 100 videos of child pornography, some of which was computer-generated, according to the authorities.
Investigators connected Mr. Bell, 49, to an online account that had shared 134 files of child sex abuse, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. The authorities served a search warrant at Mr. Bell’s home on Wednesday morning and found more child pornography videos, including some generated using artificial intelligence, the sheriff’s office said.
Mr. Bell, who was taken into custody after the search, is being held at the Sacramento County Main Jail in lieu of $1 million bail. He was charged with two felonies related to possession of child sex abuse material, according to jail records. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer, and no one responded to a call to his phone on Thursday afternoon.
This is the first time that the authorities in Sacramento County have charged someone with possession of computer-generated child sex abuse material under an amended state law that made possessing such material a criminal offense starting on Jan. 1.
Mr. Bell, a freelance cartoonist, has won several awards for his work, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 for his editorial cartoons, which “took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration,” the Pulitzer website said. He was the first Black artist to win the award for editorial cartooning.
He has been creating cartoons for newspapers since 1995, according to his website. Mr. Bell’s cartoons include “Candorville” and “Rudy Park” and are distributed by King Features Syndicate to newspapers across the country. In 2023, Mr. Bell published a graphic novel called “The Talk” about his life growing up in Los Angeles.
He is also the father of four children, according to his biography on Amazon.
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