Two young girls who police said were being forced into prostitution were rescued from a DeKalb County apartment early Friday after a SWAT standoff that lasted several hours.
Police made three arrests and said more could be forthcoming in the latest sex-trafficking crimes to hit the Atlanta area.
The arrests came as Georgia lawmakers are working to toughen laws on sex trafficking. Earlier this month, the state Senate passed a bill that would require convicted traffickers to register as sex offenders and also require them to pay into a state fund to help victims. A young victim testified in front of lawmakers in support of the stricter laws being proposed.
In the latest case, a relative of someone inside an apartment called the DeKalb police Special Victims Unit to report that the two girls, ages 12 and 14, were being held as sex slaves, Channel 2 Action News reported.
When officers late Thursday night went to the apartment, in a complex near South Hairston and Redan roads, and knocked on the door, “a subject came to the window and pointed a gun at the officers,” DeKalb Public Safety Director Cedric Alexander told Channel 2.
The officers requested backup, evacuated the apartment building and called in the SWAT team.
The standoff ended several hours later with the arrests of two men and a woman.
“The SWAT team was able to gain entry to the apartment, made the arrest and rescued the two young ladies,” Alexander said. “One 12-year-old and one 14-year-old child was rescued from this residence and they had been using them for child exploitation and prostitution.”
The girls were placed into protective custody and taken to a local hospital to be checked out.
DeKalb police spokeswoman Mekka Parish told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution late Friday morning that the names of the suspects were being withheld “because detectives are still looking for additional people possibly connected to this case.”
She said the two men arrested face a number of charges, including statutory rape, aggravated child molestation and human trafficking, and the woman faces charges that include interference with custody.
In January, two Mexican nationals were sentenced to 16 years and nearly 22 years for trafficking three young women from Mexico to Atlanta for prostitution. Arturo Rojas-Coyotl, 28, and Odilon Martinez-Rojas, 43, both of Tenancingo, Tlaxcala, Mexico, were both also ordered to pay $180,000 in restitution to the victims.
In Cobb County, a grand jury indicted Khiry Deshun Price in January on charges including trafficking, pimping, aggravated child molestation, statutory rape, pandering, enticing children and battery, Attorney General Sam Olens said. Price allegedly recruited victims, some as young as 14 years old, to sell for sex after enticing them online.
The GBI formed a unit dedicated to combating human trafficking in 2011. A 2014 research study on sex trafficking in Georgia concluded that no specific numbers are available on the number of victims, due largely to suspects' efforts to avoid law enforcement.
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