BATON ROUGE — A Zachary man was sentenced to nearly 15 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography following a 2018 arrest, according to the United States Department of Justice.

Thomas Mills V, 59, was arrested in October 2018 after the Zachary Police Department responded to reports of a suspicious vehicle parked behind a party store. 

Police, identifying Mills as a registered sex offender, discovered 19 devices containing over a thousand images and six videos depicting child exploitation upon searching his vehicle. 

Mills was on probation for a 2012 federal felony conviction for possession of child pornography, where he was sentenced to 62 months of imprisonment at the time of his arrest.

Mills, who originally pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 175 months in federal prison with five years of supervised release.