The mayor of College Park, Maryland, has been arrested on March 2, 2023, and charged with 56 counts of possession and distribution of child pornography.
Patrick Wojahn has officially resigned as the CEO of College Park, which is situated in the predominantly Black county of Prince George’s on the border of Washington, D.C.
According to the news station WJLA, Prince George’s County Police Department launched an investigation on Feb. 17, 2023, after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Once investigators rifled through Wojahn’s home, Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz said during the press conference that they found child porn stored on “multiple cellphones, a storage device, a tablet, and a computer” that belonged to Wojahn.
Detectives arrested and charged 47-year-old Patrick Wojahn with 56 counts of possession & distribution of child pornography. https://t.co/Dn9H1kzkh9 pic.twitter.com/TlspmoUmyl
— PGPDNEWS (@PGPDNews) March 2, 2023
Of the 56 felony charges, 40 of them are for possession while 16 are related to distribution.
Wojahn is currently being housed at the Prince George’s County Department of Corrections while he awaits his first court appearance.
The judge-sanctioned search through Wojahn’s home was prompted by the NCMEC’s alert that a social media account operating in the vicinity of Prince George’s County was possessing and distributing child porn. Through meticulous IT work within the police department, the investigators traced the illicit and heinous activity to Wojahn’s home.
The department was also able to surmise that the disturbing content was uploaded online as late as January 2023.
Interestingly enough, College Park City Hall did not mention the arrest but simply alerted residents in a statement that “Last night, after business hours, Mayor Patrick L. Wojahn submitted his letter of resignation as mayor of the City of College Park, effective immediately on March 2.”
Additionally, the note included the statement that the “the City of College Park thanks Mayor Wojahn for his many years of dedicated service.”
Prince George’s County in Maryland has long been tagged as one of the wealthiest Black areas in the world and is comprised of 60 percent African American residents and 17 percent White.
