One of the girls claims the man picked them up in Kentucky. That's the upshot of the probable cause statement filed in the case against Darien Lakeith McKinley, of Adelia Avenue. The statement was filed with the Bowling Green Municipal Court on Monday. McKinley, charged with one count of felony kidnapping accusing him of taking the two girls from Kentucky, is to be in court June 18 for a preliminary hearing.
McKinley, who recently moved to Kentucky from Stockbridge, Ga., remained in the Wood County Jail on Tuesday in lieu of a $85,000 cash bond, according to the court's website.
According to the probable cause statement filed with the court, the caretaker of the southbound Interstate 75, milepost 179, rest area in Wood County notified the Ohio Highway Patrol Post at Bowling Green at about 4 p.m. Saturday, June 9, that a distraught young female reported that she had just been released by her captor after being abducted. The 17-year-old also said her captor still had another juvenile in his custody.
The young woman said her captor was driving a rig with a white trailer that had red lettering down the side that read "Eagle," according to the probable cause statement. She told troopers she had given her mother a license plate number during a phone conversation earlier in the day.
The young woman told troopers she had been forced to engage in sexual activity while in Ohio before her captor drove her and a 16-year-old girl who was also in the rig to Detroit. There, she said, he threatened to beat her if she refused to cooperate with his demands to engage in sexual activity with others.
She told troopers that her captor drove back to Ohio, where only she was "kicked out of the truck" at the rest stop. That's when she called law enforcement, according to the probabe cause statement. She told troopers that the 16-year-old was still in the semitrailer, which was headed to Louisville.
When troopers from the Piqua Post located the semitrailer along I-75 south in Shelby County at about 5:30 p.m., the 16-year-old told them she was in the rig "at her own free will."
She told authorities the man driving the semitrailer was "the same driver they they initially left Louisville with and were coming back south with," according to the probable cause statement.
McKinley, in the statement, said he had picked up both girls at a rest stop south of Toledo and dropped off the one at a rest area in Wood County. A check with the National Crime Information Center database revealed that the 16-year-old had been entered as a missing person by police in Louisville at about 2 p.m. Saturday, June 9.
Monday evening, Piqua Post Patrol Lt. Anne Ralston told the Toledo Blade she did not know how long the girls had been missing or where they were from, and that they were in temporary protective custody or had been returned to their families.
Troopers located the suspect's commercial vehicle on I-75 south near milepost 98 in Shelby County at 5:30 p.m. They also located the second missing juvenile -- a 16-year-old female -- in the vehicle.
Special Agent Dave Dustin, with the Toledo office of the FBI, told WTOL in Toledo that the older girl told agents she had been transported from Kentucky, up through Ohio and into Michigan. Dustin said she told agents "at some point another girl was picked up along the way." He said both girls are from the Louisville area.
McKinley was arraigned Monday by video. There is no indication, in court record or through OSP, whether McKinley was a driver for a company or an independent trucker.
The OSP and the FBI in Toledo and Dayton are investigating the suspected kidnapping as a possible case of human trafficking.
"The initial investigation indicates that there was some forced sexual activity with third parties," Dustin said, "which is kind of what got us involved in this and the possibility of there being human trafficking involved."
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