What began as a traffic stop in Ellijay early Friday led to Gilmer County’s first human trafficking arrest, authorities said.
Cordarrel William Blandburg, 26, of Gainesville, was stopped at Old Highway 5 and Bobcat Trail about 1 a.m for failing to dim his headlights and driving without a tag light, Ellijay police Chief Edward Lacey told AJC.com.
When Officer Brandon Heath got to the window of the Toyota Prius, he noticed a 30-year-old woman in the passenger seat. Blandburg told the officer the woman was his fiancee and that he was rushing her to the hospital because she’d suffered a seizure, Lacey said.
Suspicious of their relationship, Heath followed the couple to the hospital, where he eventually separated them and started asking questions.
It was there the woman told him that Blandburg was “her owner and enforcer,” police said.
“(Blandburg) originally claimed the passenger was his fiancee, but it ended up being that he was actually holding her as his property,” Lacey said Wednesday. “She absolutely denied being his fiancee and gave us information which led us to believe that she was being held against her will for the purposes of sex trafficking.”
Heath also discovered Blandburg was driving without a license and that he was wanted in Clayton County on aggravated assault and obstruction charges, police said.
Blandburg was arrested and charged with human trafficking for sexual purposes, driving without a valid license and driving without a tag light, jail records show. He remains held at the Gilmer County jail and will be extradited to Clayton County to face charges there, authorities said.
Blandburg is being investigated for similar activities in Hall and Clayton counties, police said, and may have been trying to set up a trafficking operation in Gilmer County, where he was allegedly “in the process of getting established” out of a hotel room.
Lacey praised Heath for recognizing the signs of sex trafficking and making the arrest, saying he was “definitely looking past the traffic stop.”
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