Key ruling ahead in trial of man linked to Diana Alvarez

FORT MYERS, Fla. A federal court judge plans to rule Friday morning whether a cell phone with lewd images of Diana Alvarez will be admissible in the trial of a man who was last seen with the missing 9-year-old San Carlos Park girl.

Jorge Guerrero, who is accused of possessing child pornography, was named in an Amber Alert issued for Diana following her disappearance in May 2016.

Guerrero has not been charged in connection with her disappearance.

His attorney filed a motion to not use the phone, which was traced back to Guerrero after a landscaper found it while cutting high grass in Orange County, because it was password-protected.

Guerrero gave law enforcement a four-digit password to unlock the phone in a videotaped interview from last year that was shown in court Thursday. But he told a federal prosecutor on the stand Thursday that his password is five digits.

He admitted, when pressed by the prosecutor, that he had lied about the password but said he didn’t know whom he had lied to, just that he did it to protect his privacy.

The phone traveled from Orlando to the Fort Myers area just one day before Diana was reported missing, court records said. The phone was then tracked to Okeechobee, Yeehaw Juction and back to Okeechobee, court documents said.

A landscaper who found the phone told detectives someone named Jorge called it and told him to keep it, court documents said.

Guerrero admitted to touching Diana inappropriately, but denied having sex with her, when he moved into her San Carlos Park home in June 2015, court documents said. He moved out weeks before her disappearance.

Several Florida Department of Law Enforcement witnesses took the stand Thursday as Alvarez’s family watched from the courtroom.

“I felt bad because I am not able to see my daughter, and then looking at (Guerrero) … I didn’t even wanna see him,” Alvarez’s mother, Rita Hernandez, said in Spanish. “But when I did, I just wanted to … ask him where is my daughter.”