Gatlinburg man arrested after Homeland Security / KPD ICAC Task Force investigation

Johnny Ray Sammons, 32, of Gatlinburg, is charged with rape of a child and could face additional federal charges for allegedly transmitting the recording, according to the arrest warrant.

It states that on June 5, an officer with the Knoxville Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received video and images from Sammons, in which he sent an explicit image of a child younger than 13, and a recording of him molesting a second child. “In one of the videos the defendant is narrating the (molestation),” Gatlinburg Detective Rodney Burns wrote in the arrest warrant.

Gatlinburg Police joined the KPD ICAC Task Force in investigating the case after they traced the images. Investigators found that furniture in Sammons’s home matched that seen in the video and images, according to the warrant.

Knoxville’s ICAC Task Force works with federal agencies and with 30 other local and state law enforcement agencies to help track and arrest sexual predators online.