Rescued Arizona Sex Trafficking Victim
Sex trafficking is so scary. It’s a real possibility for anyone and anywhere.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety officials say that a traffic stop near Kingman was lucky for one sixteen year old girl who was going to be sold for sex.
They said that the teen was in the company of a man and woman. Luckily their vehicle was stopped by the DPS Trooper, Jonathan Otto.
Otto had clocked the car going very fast, more than 100 mph as it was traveling towards Las Vegas.
Otto said that the first thing that he had noticed when he made his way to the vehicle that that was an “overwhelming odor of perfume”. There was also an adult woman in the front passenger seat who was “dressed scantily”.
Otto’s Statement:
She was actually wearing lingerie. That’s something I’ve never encountered on a regular traffic stop before.
Teen Victim
He then saw a teen in the back seat of the vehicle.
Once the smell of perfume dissipated, Otto noticed a new odor coming from the car…marijuana.
The driver of course denied having marijuana in the vehicle, but did admit to smoking it in the vehicle a could of days earlier.
After that, Otto had everyone get out of the vehicle and got to identifying the woman and the teen.
The teen was also not wearing a lot of cloths. She wasn’t carrying an ID, but she was compliant and told him her name and said that she was eighteen years old.
Otto then put the three of them in the back of his vehicle and started searching the vehicle. He then started noticing “a lot of indicators of sex trafficking”. There was even a document from a children’s court in California, it had the teen’s name on it.
The search ended up showing nothing but “debris” but he did end up running the name of the woman and the teen. That’s when he found out that the young girl was sixteen and not eighteen.
Otto’s Statement:
With the indications of sexual trafficking and then knowing that she was a juvenile now, I separated her from the adults and questioned her about her date of birth.
The teen said that she wasn’t a runaway. She claimed that she had been kicked out of her home.
When Otto asked about her guardians he found out that her most recent guardian was her grandmother. When Otto contacted her grandmother he found out that the teen was a runaway and wasn’t supposed to be with any adults or in Arizona. Otto also found out that there’s a chance that “prostitution was involved” in the case.
Since he had more information, Otto tried to go talk to the young girl again.
She continued to deny everything and said that she was “okay”. Otto luckily knew she wasn’t.
Otto’s Statement:
I feel like I gave her a chance to get away from this situation.
One of the things that Otto noticed that the young girl was malnourished. She also had makeup caked on her face and they had little luggage in the car. A happy family traveling always over packs.
It was later found out that the girl had been taken from Southern California. She was trafficked in Arizona and was going to be trafficked again in Las Vegas. Thankfully Otto didn’t give up on her or his instincts.
Otto’s Statement:
She had come from a poverty-stricken life, and this was a way to make quick money. She was trying to get away from her impoverished life. … I’m just glad was able to intercept her. I believe she got into the prostitution world when she was 15, last year. She had gone missing from San Diego in November. … At that time, I believe these two adults from Vegas had gone out to California and picked her up and took her back to Las Vegas.
The suspects were identified as Rasheen Adams and Chicha Harris. Both suspects are twenty-three years old and from Vegas. They’ve both been charged with three felonies each including: custodial interference, sex trafficking of a minor and theft of means of transportation.
Police think that Adams and Harris connected with the teen through common friends.
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