Corbin Police are investigating a hidden camera that was found in a faculty bathroom at Corbin High School.
Corbin Police Detective Rusty Hedrick said school officials called police after the camera hidden in a smoke detector was noticed by one of the staff members who was using the facility on the ground floor of the high school last Monday.
Hedrick said the device was placed high on the wall of the bathroom to the left of the toilet stall.
In addition to the camera, there was a mini SD memory card similar to those used in digital cameras.
“We were not able to pull any images from the card due to it being erased,” Hedrick said, adding the card has been sent to the Kentucky State Police Crime Lab in Frankfort to determine whether any images may be retrieved.
“We don’t know if there will be any images or not,” Hedrick said, noting without the images it is unknown exactly what type of images the camera may have been capturing, what kind of range the camera had or whether it was still working.
“We believe it was motion activated but we won’t know until we get it checked out,” Hedrick said, adding that it appeared to draw its power from the smoke detector’s battery
The smoke detector and camera have also been sent to the crime lab to determine whether the perpetrator(s) may have left any fingerprints.
Depending on the backlog at the lab, Hedrick said it may be weeks or months before the results are known.
Corbin Independent Schools Superintendent Ed McNeil said male and female faculty and staff members share the bathroom.
“This is the first time we had anything like this happen and it is not acceptable,” McNeil said, adding administrators, faculty and staff will be more observant at all of the school system’s facilities to ensure it is a one-time incident.
Hedrick said police officers conducted a thorough walk-through and did not find any other items
Police are conducting interviews with faculty and staff in an attempt to establish a time frame for when the device may have been placed in the bathroom.
Hedrick said the perpetrator(s) face voyeurism charges. Voyeurism is a class A misdemeanor carrying a potential jail sentence of three months to one year and a fine of up to $500.
“If there are images of more than one person, then each person would be a separate count,” Hedrick said.
