A Scottsdale man with a Sedona connection was arrested June 16 by officers with the Surprise Police Department and indicted by a grand jury July 12 for numerous sex crimes against at least four girls, at least two of which were 13 years old.
Scottsdale resident David Jon Schnirch, 52, is facing seven counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, one count sex conduct with a minor under age 15, four counts of luring a minor for sexual exploitation regarding four girls and two counts of furnishing harmful items to minors.
If you know or suspect a child might be a victim of sexual abuse or exploitation, call local police at 911, Arizona Department of Child Safety at 1-888-767- 2445, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678 or the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. Learn more about the warning signs of sexual abuse at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website, RAINN.org.
Schnirch was erroneously initially identified as a Sedona resident by Phoenix area news outlets.
While he does not live in Sedona, he is an investor in the Hideaway House restaurant in Sedona, but has little connection to the business, according to Hideaway House owner and operator Gregory Ziegler.
“In June 2021, I was alerted that an investor in our beloved Sedona institution Hideaway House restaurant had been arrested in Scottsdale, where he lived and worked full-time as an employee at a Scottsdale-based company,” Ziegler said July 14. “This news came as a complete shock to me and our team here at Hideaway House, who all live here in Sedona and work to make Hideaway House a special experience day in and day out.”
“I filed a restraining order and began a legal path to removing this person from our business. We immediately offered counseling to anyone on our team that needed it,” Ziegler said. “Having worked in the restaurant industry in Arizona since 1996, I have never experienced a tragic situation like this, and I thank the many people here in our community who have reached out in support.”
“On a personal note, while myself and our team are united in moving past this horrible situation, we’re saddened that the restaurant is part of the story,” Ziegler said. “The man [Schnirch] lives full-time in Scottsdale, has full-time employment at a Scottsdale-based business, and did not operate the restaurant, [nor] engage with the staff, make decisions that are felt or were felt from a customer experience standpoint, and hasn’t set foot on the property in nearly six months, long before we learned of this. We’re as shocked to hear this as you are, and are deeply saddened for those that were affected.”
Criminal Investigation
The Surprise Police Department was contacted April 25 by the mother of a 13-year-old victim who reported that her daughter was being solicited for sex by an adult male, according to a police report provided by SPD Public Information Officer Sgt. Tommy Hale.
According to the report, the victim disclosed to her mother that while she had not met the man in person, her 13-year-old friend had more than once and having seen the suspect from a distance, feared for her friend “as he appeared to be a much older man.”
The mother told police she had found messages of a sexual nature on her daughter ’s SnapChat account and provided them to police, who then obtained a warrant for the messages in the suspect’s SnapChat account.
Throughout the conversation with the victims, the suspect reportedly referred to the girls as “princess,” “kitten” and “little girl” while the victims referred to him as “daddy,” at his request.
“It should be noted the victim asks him his age and he did not respond to her via SnapChat message,” the report reads.
According to the nine-page police report narrative, Schnirch began chatting with at least three girls via the SnapChat app, then lured them into providing photos, after which, the report states, Schnirch offered to pick them up or drop them off at school in his “Toyota Tacoma in cement grey [sic],” and sent a photo of his truck. In one case, a victim’s school was allegedly 40 minutes away from his home.
Schnirch sent videos of previous victims to new victims, suggesting they engage in similar behavior.
The messages detailed in the report quickly became explicitly sexual. Schnirch and the victims shared photos, voice mails and videos, including at least one video of himself engaged in a solo sexual act purportedly at his workplace: A Porsche dealership in Scottsdale, according to police.
One of the videos of a sexual encounter saved in the suspect’s account depicts the interior of a Toyota Tacoma that police allege matches the suspect’s truck interior.
In reviewing the SnapChat interaction with the first two victims, police then found a third. According to the report, Schnirch allegedly congratulates this third victim for graduating to become a high school freshman on a day of their first sexual encounter.
Video of a fourth victim involved in several sexual encounters on a bed in a building was also found. Police did not indicate if the third and fourth victims had been identified or interviewed by police.
Surprise police detectives were able to link the subscriber account to Schnirch’s cell phone IP address.
The suspect made contact with an undercover detective on social media on June 15, after announcing that they were 15 years old. “The suspect asked the undercover detective for a voice message stating, ‘Tell daddy your age princess and where you are at,’” according to the report.
Schnirch was subsequently arrested and charged, and is held on $500,000 bond.
He is set for a pre-trial conference Aug. 17 and two jury trials beginning Oct. 26 and Feb. 24.
