Eight people have been arrested over the trafficking of a 15-year-old girl from a Dallas Mavericks game she was attending with her father.
The 15-year-old went to use the bathroom during the game and never returned. Photos of her later appeared on a prostitution website based in Oklahoma City. The girl was found after a 10-day search.
Saniya Alexander, Melissa Wheeler, Chevaun Gibson, Kenneth Nelson, Sarah Hayes, Karen Gonzales, Thalia Gibson, and Steven Hill have all been arrested. The charges for the eight include child trafficking, rape, child pornography, and offering to engage in prostitution.
Oklahoma City authorities have arrested and charged eight individuals after a 15-year-old Texas girl was allegedly trafficked from a Dallas Mavericks game at the American Airlines Center (AAC) game on April 8.
The girl went to use the bathroom while attending the Mavericks game with her father and never returned, according to a press release from her family’s attorney, Zeke Fortenberry of the Fortenberry Firm, PLLC.
She was gone for 10 days until authorities located her at an Extended Stay America hotel in Oklahoma City on April 18.
An attorney for the victim’s family has questioned the security at the game and said the system “continually failed the victim.”
In a statement on Friday, family attorney Zeke Fortenberry raised questions about the systems used by Dallas Police and the American Airlines Center – and said more could have been done.
“The systems and organisations involved in this case continually failed the victim”, the attorney was reported as saying. “She should never have had contact with the man at the Mavericks game. The Dallas Police should have worked quickly to investigate leads and locate the teenager before she was trafficked to Oklahoma”.