Ex-wife: ‘How could you do this to our daughter?’

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — A man accused of sexually exploiting children and performing sex acts on a dog is trying to have his charges thrown out.

Investigators received a cell phone anonymously earlier this year. The phone allegedly had pornographic pictures on it that ultimately led to the arrest of Derrick Price. Now his attorney is arguing that phone was not theirs to search, and therefore evidence found is unconstitutional.

Price is currently facing charges of sexually exploiting a child among others.

It wasn’t until after he’d been charged that Price’s ex-wife realized her daughters, one of them his child, were the ones police say were pictured in the pornographic images. We are not identifying the mother of the alleged victims in this case so as to not identify the victim.

“I really just, it felt like it was not true. I could not, I just, I couldn’t believe it,” the victims’ mother said. “I just could not believe this was happening. It seemed like this was a nightmare and that somebody would wake me up. ”

Price is currently in jail, but with his bond reduced by more than $1.5 million since his arrest.

Court documents show his lawyer argues that because his phone was searched unconstitutionally the images found on his computer and in his home after the fact are all inadmissible in court.

The mother says after she found out about the charges she confronted Price in jail.

“‘How could you do this to our daughter?'” she recalled asking him. “He said, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ I said, ‘Well you tell me how a 3-year-old can give such detail of sexual actions. How can a 3-year-old do this if she’s not been sexually assaulted?’ He told me, ‘One day she was taking a nap, and she came out of the bedroom, and I was watching pornography. So I guess that is what she saw, but I swear I didn’t touch our daughter.'”

We reached out to Price for comment. He declined our request for an interview in the New Hanover County Jail.

He’ll be in court tomorrow on an unrelated DWI charge and then back in court on these charges on Oct. 9.