DOBSON — A 58-year-old former Surry County resident has been arrested on alleged sexual abuse offenses involving two sisters younger than 16.

Daniel Allen Oswald of Virginia Beach, Va., was charged Wednesday in Surry County with felony violations of first-degree sex offense with a child under the age of 13, indecent liberties with a child under 16 and two counts of first-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, according to Surry County Sheriff Graham Atkinson, who reported the arrest Saturday afternoon.

The investigation into the alleged incidents began in April after the Surry County Sheriff’s Office and the Virginia Beach Police Department each received a letter from a concerned citizen which contained copies of pictures that had been made of one of the victims. The letter identified Oswald and where the crimes supposedly had taken place in Surry County, but it did not include an identification of the child pictured.

Atkinson said the letter also stated that Oswald had taken the child on trips with him while he was employed by a local trucking company and had abused her during those trips as well.

With no identification available for the victim, Atkinson said his office cropped the photo down to show her face and started taking it to the middle schools in the county. Someone at one of those schools was able to identify her.

“When she was interviewed, she was upset and crying and she let us know her (older) sister was a victim of Mr. Oswald as well,” Atkinson reported. “We also, through the course of the investigation, learned about two more potential victims.”

He said due to the investigation showing the girls had been transported across state lines on the trucking trips, the sheriff’s office contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation agent assigned to the FBI Task Force.

Since pictures of the victims had been taken, the FBI contacted Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC), a task force funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention designed to help state and local law enforcement agencies enhance their investigative response to offenders who use computers to sexually exploit children.

ICAC was contacted because the sheriff’s office and FBI were afraid the victims’ photos might have been posted on the Internet, Atkinson said. “The FBI has adopted the case to look at it on a national level through their databases.”

On Friday, the Virginia State Police conducted a search of the camper where Oswald had been living in Virginia Beach, Atkinson reported.

Oswald’s arrest came after one of the victims notified the sheriff’s office that he was back in the Surry County area.

He is in the Surry County Jail on a $450,000 bond and has already had his first appearance in Surry District Court, the sheriff said.

“We’re afraid there may be other victims that are afraid to come forward,” Atkinson said. “This is something that makes you sick to your stomach. We hope that if there are other victims that they will contact us, because we want to make sure we prosecute him on everything we can.”

Anyone with information on this case is asked to contact the Surry County Sheriff’s Office at 401-8900.