A bench warrant has been issued for the 27-year-old Austin man charged with possession child pornography.

Ryan Keith Pickar missed a pretrial appearance Friday. He had pleaded not guilty to eight counts of possession of pornographic work involving minors.

According to the criminal complaint, investigations into the case began early 2007, after an employee of E-Z Own Sales and Financing, of Austin, reported several video clips of child pornography on a laptop computer returned by Pickar.

The employee allegedly said he found the files while cleaning the computer, which Pickar couldn’t continue to pay for, and contacted police.

Pickar said in a preliminary interview with officers that he never saved the pornographic images to his computer, adding that he’d planned on doing a project on child pornography and how to prevent it online, the complaint said. He was training to be a police officer.

In July, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force requested to examine the computer, and in October reported that the laptop contained 106 images and 36 videos of child pornography, the complaint states. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that several of the images contained “known” victims of these crimes.

The Dakota County detective working with the task force also said the defendant had visited Web sites with family incest and teen nudity themes.

In a second interview last December, Pickar maintained that he never saved child pornography on his computer, according to the complaint.