A Beaver County man who initially lied to police when he said he wasn't having sex with a 14-year-old girl pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal child pornography charge related to explicit videos of her discovered on his phone.

Elijah Winchester, 23, of Rochester, entered a plea to possession of material depicting the sexual exploitation of a minor in 2018, when she was 14 and he was 21.

In the spring of that year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Karl said, police in Beaver acquired evidence that Winchester was having sex with the girl.

Officers questioned him on May 21. He said he knew the girl but denied any sex.

But based on further evidence, police in June of that year obtained a search warrant for his phone, which revealed 14 porn videos involving the girl. In some, Mr. Lee said, the faces of both the girl and Winchester can be seen. In others, the girl was identified by a distinctive navel piercing.

The videos were all created on May 16 and 17 in 2018.

U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti will sentence Winchester in June.

First Published: February 25, 2020, 8:27 p.m.