A victim who helped Cobb County investigators track down a man suspected of trafficking teenagers for sex was so afraid of her pimp that she refused to get out of an ambulance without a police escort, warrants allege.
Earnest Reed, 29, was arrested earlier this month after allegedly trafficking young women across several U.S. cities, including metro Atlanta, authorities said.
According to Reed’s arrest warrant, one of the places he kept the women was at a Days Inn on Cobb Place Boulevard near Kennesaw. Reed is accused of forcing at least one teenage victim into sexual servitude by beating her “if she did not have sex with men for money,” authorities said.
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Police found multiple advertisements for the girl on dating websites such as MegaPersonals and Skip the Games, according to Reed’s arrest warrant. His alleged victim told investigators she was forced to sell herself for sex along with two other teen girls — ages 16 and 18 — who were being held against their will at the hotel.
According to the warrant, a hotel manager canceled the final day of their stay in October and called the police after he began to suspect Reed of trafficking the women.
“They came in to extend the room and when she came in, her face was all beat up,” Malcom King, assistant manager of the Days Inn, told Channel 2 Action News. “She looked terrified.”
Authorities launched an investigation into Reed and determined he was trafficking young women across several U.S. states, the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office said earlier this month.
He was arrested Dec. 18 in Memphis, Tennessee, after local police and members of the U.S. Marshals Service tracked him to a friend’s home, authorities said. Reed has since been extradited to Georgia and is being held without bond at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center, jail records show.
He faces one count of trafficking a person for sexual servitude and one count of rape after allegedly assaulting the woman inside his hotel room after she told him she wouldn’t have sex with him, according to his warrant.
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