A girl said that she was held captive for hours.
The 15-year-old Brookhaven High School student, whose identity was withheld for safety reasons, said she was kidnapped on the corner of Morse and Karl Roads Friday.
She said that she was walking home from school when a man who asked if she knew a man named “Petey” approached her. When the girl said no, the man lifted his shirt to reveal a gun and forced her into a car.
She said that she sat in the back seat with her head down as a group of four men and one woman drove her to an unknown location.
“It took us like 40 minutes to get there. The house was like creamish whitish, boards on the windows, boards on the door and we got in through the back door,” She said. “As soon as I walked in, it was completely, like, smoky. People were smoking weed, like thug music on. There was like little cots on the ground, like little mattress cots."
She said that there were other girls at the house, provocatively dressed and made up.
“They seemed so casual, like, this is the norm for them,” she said. “Like, me being with my mom, that’s normal for me. Going to school, that’s normal. They seemed like this is their lifestyle.”
The victim said that the man who showed her the gun appeared to be in charge.
“He said, ‘You can have a seat on that cot,’ and I just sat there,” the girl said. “I didn’t look up or nothing, was just looking down. He was like, ‘Nobody touch her, she’s mine.’”
The girl sat for hours as the men left the home and returned.
“When I sat there on that cot, I felt so neglected,” She said. “Nobody asked me was I cold, was I hungry. Like, I was shivering and I thought, in that quick instant, like, I may never get back home. That was when it really, really hit me and I started really crying."
He tears got the attention of another woman in the house
“The girl, the black and Chinese girl, I guess she was the leader of all the rest of the girls, she came up to me like, ‘What's wrong? She was asking me all these questions,” she said. “I told her I was only 15 and she thought I was 18. She was like, ‘Oh, you're only 15? You’re really young.’ She was like, ‘You don't look like the type of girl that should be here.’”
The girl said it was that girl who got her out of the house and took her back to the intersection from where she was taken.
Marlene Carson is a survivor of human trafficking and an advocate. She said that the girl's story is too detailed not to be credible.
“The dynamics of the house she described are a trap house, what they call a trap house, really no one lives there. It’s like an abandoned house with mattresses,” Carson said.
Carson said that trap houses are where young girls are sold for sex. A fate the girl avoided, thanks to the mercy of a stranger.
“Something touched her heart to realize, ‘You're too young to be here and I’m gonna get you out,’" Carson said.
Columbus police were investigating the kidnapping.
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for more information.