A Florida doggy daycare employee was using a company device when something disturbing surfaced: an image of her 10-year-old daughter partially undressed in what appeared to be the business bathroom.
That discovery sent workers looking more closely at the room. Inside what appeared to be an electrical outlet, they found a hidden camera, according to a Volusia Sheriff’s Office activity report.
Deputies responded to Dog Dayz Inn near New Smyrna Beach, and detectives with the sheriff’s Child Exploitation Unit obtained a search warrant. The business owner, 59-year-old Donald Hemphill, was detained while the property was searched.
What deputies say they found on Hemphill’s phone turned the discovery into a 21-count criminal case involving multiple women and a child.
Inside The Outlet
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The Volusia Sheriff’s Office said the camera had been concealed inside an electrical outlet in the bathroom at the Edgewater Canal Road facility.
Hemphill admitted installing it four to five months earlier, the sheriff’s office said.
Multiple video files recovered from his phone showed unsuspecting female subjects in stages of undress. One of the people recorded was a child.
The department later provided another detail about how employees found the device. Its activity report says a worker first discovered an image of her 10-year-old daughter, bare from the waist down, on Hemphill’s phone. The employee then found the concealed camera in the bathroom outlet.
That sequence also clears up an apparent contradiction in the initial account. In a comment on its social media post, the sheriff’s office explained that an image from the camera was discovered first, leading workers to inspect the outlet more closely.
Twenty-One Counts
Hemphill is charged with 10 counts of digital voyeurism and 11 counts of video voyeurism of a child.
The sheriff’s office said he was being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail without bond.
The case remains with the sheriff’s Child Exploitation Unit.