Man a lifetime registrant to Nevada Sex Offender Registry
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A convicted Las Vegas sex offender is accused of filming young boys in a public bathroom and then recording sexual assaults involving a child, documents the 8 News Now Investigators obtained said.
Las Vegas Metro police arrested Kent Preston, 53 on Thursday, Dec. 29, on charges including sexual assault against a child and kidnapping of a minor, records showed. The arrest occurred at a home near Desert Inn Road and Boulder Highway in the east valley, records showed.
According to the Nevada Sex Offender Registry, Preston was convicted on an aggravated sexual battery charge in 2007 in Virginia. He is a Tier 3 offender, meaning he must be registered in Nevada for life.
In August, police in Newport Beach, California, received a call about someone recording young boys in a public bathroom, LVMPD documents said. A person reported seeing a camera “pointing in his direction while in the stall,” documents said.
Newport Beach police arrested Preston as he was leaving the bathroom, police said. They also seized his cell phone, accusing him of recording.
On Dec. 29, the day of Preston’s Las Vegas arrest, a LVMPD detective received a phone call from a Newport Beach police detective about their case, documents said. The call was to reportedly alert Las Vegas authorities about the incident since Preston lives in Las Vegas and is on the Nevada registry.
Detectives reviewed Preston’s phone, finding “several videos and photographs of what appeared to be a pre-teen juvenile male, who Kent seemed obsessed with photographing and videoing,” they wrote in documents.
Detectives located videos on Preston’s phone that they “recognized… as child pornography produced by Kent,” police said. Metadata from the videos showed they were created in Las Vegas in April 2022, police said.
Investigators later located a child living in Las Vegas whom they believed was in non-pornographic videos on Preston’s device, they said.
Sexual assault detectives immediately began to surveil Preston’s home “as they believed… he had access to [the child] and could be sexually abusing him since his return,” they said. On Dec. 29, police watched as Preston returned home in his car. Officers then arrested him.
Detectives also spoke with the child and showed him clips from the videos. The child “positively identified the scene as Kent’s residence” and “identified himself as the juvenile and the adult male as Kent Preston,” police said.
Preston declined to answer detectives’ questions without an attorney present.
Judge Daniel Westmeyer set Preston’s bail at $500,000 during his first court appearance on Dec. 30, records showed. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Jan. 25.