More than four years after being arrested as part of a human trafficking bust, a man has pleaded guilty and been sentenced, the Dalton Citizen-News reported.
Jatta Kekuta, who was 20 and a college student when he was arrested in February 2016, recently pleaded guilty to felony criminal attempt to commit child molestation, the newspaper reported.
Several law enforcement agencies, including the GBI and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, conducted a three-day operation into alleged online child predators and sex trafficking, leading to Kekuta’s arrest. He was among 35 people arrested in the sting, which was dubbed “Operation Watchful Guardians,” AJC.com previously reported.
At the time, Kekuta was listed as living in Smyrna. Of the dozen suspects from Georgia arrested in the bust, three others were from Cobb County: Javier Lopez of Marietta, Albert Stafford of Acworth and Nathan Murawski of Marietta.
The suspects were all accused of attempting to commute with children online and coercing them to meet for sex. Most of the men believed they were messaging a 14-year-old girls, when they were actually communicating with undercover agents, the GBI said at the time.
Lopez and Stafford were both convicted in their cases and served short stints in prison, according to Georgia Department of Corrections records. Both are currently registered sex offenders. Information on the case against Nathan Murawski of Marietta was not immediately available.
Credit: GBI Sex Offender Registry
Credit: GBI Sex Offender Registry
In June 2018, Kekuta was prosecuted for failing to appear in court after being granted bond on the child molestation charge, the Citizen-News reported. He was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison, according to Georgia Department of Corrections records.
He was recently released from Lee State Prison to plead guilty in Whitfield County Superior Court to the attempted child molestation charge, which netted him a two-year prison sentence. That sentence will run concurrently to the sentence he was given for bail jumping, the newspaper reported.
He will also have to pay a $2,000 fine and will spend eight years on probation, District Attorney Bert Poston told the Citizen-News.
