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Kannapolis man faces felony child pornography charges

KANNAPOLIS — A Kannapolis man is facing felony charges for having child pornography after detectives say they found around a dozen images of minors on his computer. This week police served an arrest warrant on 26-year-old Aaron Campbell on a street with a school, playground and plenty of children.

"There's a lot of kids that run around here like all the time," neighbor Katherine Delk said. "There's constantly kids on bikes, playing around. It's like unimaginable. It's absolutely unimaginable."

The charges: two counts of felony second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.

"To find something out like that, it's crazy," Delk said.

The investigation into Campbell actually started in January after detectives got a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They have a unit that analyzes online images and video for child porn.

They've handed more than 2 million reports of suspected child exploitation to law enforcement all over the country.  Delk is glad detectives at the Cabarrus County Sheriff's Office followed up on the tip immediately and made an arrest quickly.

"It could have been an empty tip, but he still followed through with it," Delk said. "And it's a good thing he did."

But the mother is still worried.

"It makes me really nervous about where I'm living, to be perfectly honest with you," Delk said.

Channel 9 went to Campbell's home, but no one answered the door. Campbell is expected in court on Monday.