Montco pediatrician, arrested for possessing child pornography, found dead in jail

A formerpediatrician arrested last month for possession of child pornography was found dead in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility Sunday, authorities said.

Authorities said Dr. David Kennedy admitted to possessing a collection of images after a nurse practitionerworking in his practice found them on an iPhone he had given, and reported him to police.

Kennedy, 48, of Pennsburg, was arrested Nov. 28, charged with sexual abuse of children and criminal use of a communications facility.

An autopsy was performed, and the cause of death is pending, NBC10 reported.

“Montgomery County detectives are investigating, as they would any death in the prison,”a spokeswomanfor District Attorney Kevin R. Steele told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Kennedy — who owned Personal Care Pediatrics on Main Street in Pennsburg — gave the nurse an iPhone 7 Plus as a gift after she volunteered to answer after-hours calls over Thanksgiving weekend, authorities said.

But Kennedy wasn’t aware that his iCloud photo stream was connected to the new phone, according to the criminal complaint.

The nurse was using the phone to answer calls from patients, research medical information and take photos of her Thanksgiving celebrations. But when she went into the phone’s photo album, “she found what she estimated to be hundreds of digital images of naked women,” according to the criminal complaint.

Some of the images were thought to be of females under the age of 18.

After the nurse contacted authorities, Kennedy later admitted to authorities that he had downloaded images of child pornography, prosecutors said.