3 arrested when squatting complaint in Marietta leads to trafficking charges
The Marietta Police Department said a call from maintenance workers complaining about possible squatters in an empty apartment turned into a human trafficking investigation with three arrests, and an ongoing search for a fourth person accused of participating.
The agency said officers responded to a 911 call from maintenance workers in the morning hours of May 27 and found five people — including two underage girls — sleeping inside a vacant apartment at 730 Franklin Gateway.
Marietta police ultimately arrested three teenagers, including one who was a runaway who was reunited with his family after the squatting incident but has now been arrested and faces juvenile charges.
The other two boys arrested, Damian Downing and Keatron Jones, face charges including trafficking of persons for sexual servitude and first-degree burglary, among others. Downing and Jones were listed in jail records as having been born in 2008, but they did not have birth dates listed.
Jones was taken into custody at the scene because of outstanding warrants for aggravated assault and theft, according to a press release from the police.
Another teen, Jadon Mitchell, 18, has also been charged as a result of the trafficking investigation, but the department said he is not in custody. Police have since issued a “Be on the Lookout” bulletin for him that says he has run away from home and does not have any other known addresses.
Mitchell and the underage boy were present when police responded to the squatting call but were not arrested. A police spokesperson said Mitchell was released because he had no warrants, and the juvenile was released because he had been reported missing by his family. The department said he was transported to their headquarters and reunited with them.
“We were only looking at this from the lens that people were squatting,” Charles McPhilamy, Marietta Police Department’s public information officer, said about the initial encounter at the apartment. He also said further investigation resulted in the discovery of the alleged trafficking operation.
The police said the two underage girls were both listed as missing and they “appeared to be under the influence” when they were found before being taken to a local pediatric hospital. A spokesman was not specific about whether the girls were drugged.
The girls told police they were being forced to engage in sexual acts for money that they then had to give “to the men of the house” in order to continue staying in the vacant apartment, according to arrest warrants.
Marietta police said the investigation is ongoing.
The Veritas at East Cobb, where the operation was discovered, was included in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation documenting over 200 of the most dangerous apartment complexes in the metro area. Police reported 87 crimes at the complex from 2017 to Aug. 15, 2022.