Charges dropped in child porn case

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Charges against a former sailor accused of possessing child pornography were dismissed because the Navy was unwilling to make the suspect available to the county law-and-justice system, a deputy prosecutor said during a hearing in Island County Superior Court Monday.

Deputy Prosecutor David Carman said Rylan S. Davis is serving two years of confinement in a military prison on similar child-pornography charges. He explained that the Island County charges were being dismissed without prejudice, which means they can be refiled once Davis is free from military incarceration.

Prosecutors originally charged 45-year-old Rylan S. Davis in Island County Superior Court Feb. 26 with two counts of possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct in the first degree.

Rylan was accused of sharing images of child pornography with a fellow sailor, Shane Harlacher, who was sentenced this month to 25 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to creating child abuse material. He secretly recorded a 13-year-old girl inside the bathroom of his Virginia Beach home, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

As part of a plea bargain, last September Harlacher admitted to trading child pornography and videos of bestiality with Davis, who was stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

The report by NCIS Special Agent Jonathan Lynch states that the investigation started in December 2023 when he received a CyberTip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that indicated Harlacher sent files of suspected child porn to Davis through a Facebook platform.

NCIS agents served search warrants for both of the men’s Facebook accounts and uncovered chats as well as files containing child pornography sent through Mega, an online cloud-storage service. Agents also seized a cell phone belonging to Harlacher and found videos of suspected child pornography, the report states.

Lynch’s report states that Davis sent a video of a dog being sexually abused. He wrote that the dog appears to be the same dog that appears in Davis’ social media, the report states.

Lynch recommended that prosecutors charge Davis with animal cruelty related to images of the dog, but prosecutors declined to do so. A conviction of an animal cruelty charge wouldn’t increase the standard sentencing range.