A former Metro West Fire Protection District firefighter and paramedic was sentenced to 22 years in state prison after admitting he possessed more than 100 photos depicting child sexual abuse material, capping a case that began with tips routed through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children two years earlier. David Sizemore, 32, of Wentzville, pleaded guilty in June to more than a dozen charges including promoting and possessing child pornography.
St. Charles County prosecutor Brittney Donovan described Sizemore as a danger to the community, according to the Post-Dispatch, even as court records separately called him a pillar of the community. St. Charles County police investigators received the initial tips about the alleged offenses in October and November 2023, and a search warrant later revealed that dozens of photos and additional videos had been sent from Sizemore's cellphone beginning in July 2023. Investigators say he used the Kik messaging app to send and receive sexually explicit photos of children.
How the Tips Reached Investigators
The case traces back to automated detection built into platforms like Kik. Federal court filings describe how instant messaging services use image-hashing technology that cross-references uploaded media against NCMEC's databases, automatically generating CyberTipline reports that get forwarded to regional law enforcement task forces, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That hash-matching system allows service providers to flag known abuse material without human review of every chat, and it's the same mechanism that put St. Charles County investigators onto Sizemore's IP address.
The scale of that automated pipeline is staggering nationally. NCMEC's CyberTipline received more than 36 million reports of suspected online child sexual exploitation in 2023 alone, a 360% increase over the prior decade, per the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. More recently, the U.S. Secret Service reported an 8,411% surge in CyberTipline reports involving generative AI child sexual abuse material between 2023 and 2025, alongside 137 daily financial sextortion reports in 2025.
A Career Cut Short by Suspension and Arrest
Sizemore had worked for the fire department since May 2007, responding to emergencies and participating in community outreach for more than 16 years. He was placed on administrative suspension in November 2023 as the investigation unfolded, and the Post-Dispatch's updated court reporting from Monday clarified that his employment officially ended on January 6, 2025 — correcting earlier reporting that had placed his last day in January 2024. He was arrested in September 2024, meaning he was no longer an active emergency responder by the time he was taken into custody.
Metro West Fire Protection District cooperated with the criminal investigation, the department has said. The district, founded in 1934, operates five fire stations across 57.5 square miles with locations in Ballwin, Wildwood and Ellisville, serving roughly 130,000 residents in West St. Louis County, according to the Metro West Fire Protection District. In February, the district was recognized as one of just seven fire departments in Missouri to hold international agency accreditation from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, a distinction that requires extensive peer review of an agency's management and ethics protocols, per the Missouri Division of Fire Safety.
What the Sentence Means Going Forward
Under Missouri Revised Statutes § 573.025 and § 573.035, promoting or possessing child sexual abuse material with intent to distribute is a felony that can carry sentences up to 30 years or life depending on the victim's age and how the material was distributed, according to the Missouri General Assembly. That statutory framework is what allowed prosecutors to secure the 22-year sentence across Sizemore's multiple counts.
Once released, Sizemore will face mandatory registration as a Tier II or Tier III sex offender for 25 years to life under Missouri Revised Statutes § 589.400, a requirement the state built into its modernized three-tiered registry system. The case adds to a string of recent St. Charles County-area prosecutions tied to digital forensics, including a county bartender's guilty plea in January and a separate Fenton man's arrest traced through IP tracking, part of a broader pattern of local police working with regional cyber-crime units on NCMEC leads.
Many of these cases move through coordination under Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 that combines local, state and federal resources to investigate online child exploitation. Metro West crews, meanwhile, remain a visible presence in West County emergency response, including in a river search near Castlewood last month that underscored the department's ongoing role even as the Sizemore case cast a shadow over its ranks.
