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Louisiana police say that an alert police officer realized something was off with a girl who was found in a car belonging to a man accused of public urination.
The harrowing incident unfolded on Saturday when officers of the St. Gabriel Police Department made contact with a 39-year-old man identified as Lionel Moore.
Moore was convicted in 2005 of indecent behavior with juveniles in Iberville Parish but failed to register as a sex offender several times.
St. Gabriel Police Chief Kevin Ambeau said officers found that Moore had warrants out of East Baton Rouge for failure to register as a sex offender after checking his driver’s license.
Then one officer made eye contact with the girl in his car and grew suspicious.
“Captain on the scene noticed her characteristics. She was dressed older than she was, at 17,” Ambeau said.
She also gave him different birth dates that did match her age. The teenager then confessed to have been with Moore for nearly three years.
Police determined that the girl had been reported missing by her mother in 2024.
“My captain was able to get the mom’s number, and we contacted the mom, who had moved out of state,” Ambeau added.
Police called on the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services to help with the teenager.
Moore was convicted in 2005 of indecent behavior with juveniles in Iberville Parish but failed to register as a sex offender several times. He was taken into custody over the felony warrant.
Ambeau said they are now trying to determine if the teenager was being forced into sex trafficking. They are utilizing facial recognition technology on images from police body cameras and searching for her on sex trafficking sites.
“I been here all my life, and I’m 62 years old, and I ain’t never of heard of nothing like this,” said Jeffery Ben, a resident of St. Gabriel. “That’s bad.”
St. Gabriel is a city of about 6,677 residents in southern central Louisiana.
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