According to court documents, the girl said the women she was found with had given her drugs and alcohol, forced her to prostitute and taken the money she was given.
DALLAS — A 12-year-old girl who was reported missing in Dallas is back home with her family after being rescued from a suspected sex trafficking operation.
Damon Mayes and his sister, Regina Mayes-Evans, said they found their niece early Tuesday morning at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Gould Street near Forest Park. The sixth grader had been reported missing to the Dallas Police Department late in the evening on November 29, the Friday after Thanksgiving.
They received a tip from a woman who said she had spoken with the girl and later saw the fliers the family created and posted to social media.
“I got that text, and I drove all night long,” Mayes said. “[Regina] picked up the daytime.”
Mayes-Evans was the first to spot the child early Tuesday. She called the police and was told not to approach the girl by herself.
“She looked like she had been drugged,” Mayes-Evans said. “She was so high, she didn’t even recognize who she was.”
After calling the police, Mayes-Evans called her brother.
“She said she saw pink teddy bear shoes,” Mayes said. “I was so happy she wasn’t dead.”
Mayes said he rushed to where his sister had found the child. When he arrived, he started filming the scene and streaming it live to his Facebook page. Mayes immediately confronted an adult woman who was shown in the video sitting next to his niece. In the initial shot, the woman appears to be counting money that she’s pulled out of her pocket.
“You done made that off my niece,” Mayes can be heard yelling at the woman in his video. “You’ve been out here selling my niece to a man.”
Mayes-Evans confirmed that she saw interactions between her niece and the woman that made her believe the woman was “prostituting” the child while she was waiting to approach.
Mayes’ Facebook video, posted in two parts, lasts about 30 minutes. At some points in the video he uses a slur of expletives, at other points he seems to break down in tears.
“We angry,” he states, at one point.
Throughout the video, Mayes brandishes a wooden baseball bat from the trunk of his car and directs the woman not to move as he’s called the police. He scans the area and focuses on a partially full cup sitting next to a liquor bottle and narrates to his Facebook audience that the woman had given alcohol to his niece.
At one point in the video, the woman weakly argues that she didn’t know the girl was a child. Mayes quickly retorted.
After more than 30 minutes, Mayes and Mayes-Evans said they took their niece to the police station where she was interviewed by detectives before being taken to the hospital.
According to court documents, the girl told detectives the women she was found with had given her drugs and alcohol, forced her to prostitute, and taken the money that she was given.
Dallas Police confirm that they arrested that woman and charged her with compelling prostitution of someone under 18.
The Mayes family is thankful.
“All Hallelujah, praise to God that we found her,” Mayes-Evans said.
They credit their community’s vigilance and support for their niece’s recovery.
“Oak Cliff came through,” Mayes said. “This whole sector was out here day and night.”
Mayes said he is frustrated with how his family was treated by the Dallas Police Department, which he attributed to the fact that the girl had run away from home before.
“If you have reported them as running away from home before, it’s surely not treated as an emergency,” Mayes-Evans said.
The family said it took hours for an officer to arrive at the home after she was initially reported missing and that they were given the runaround when trying to get in touch with the right unit to report tips they had received.
“We were told, at one point, that there was no investigator assigned to our case,” Mayes said. “Then one officer, when I told him someone saw her, he told me he saw his kids at 8 o’clock too.”
The family said the child suffers from seizures and has multiple mental health diagnoses that require medication. They said they informed authorities that she had been without her medicine each day she was missing but weren’t shown any more urgency.
Per Dallas Police Department Policy, a “missing child” can be upgraded to a “critical missing child” if the child suffers from physical or mental disabilities that prevent their ability to care for themselves. A critical missing child, according to DPD, warrants a more intensive investigative search process.
A spokesperson for the department told WFAA, “There were no reports to the officers or detectives listed that the juvenile needed medication.”
The spokesperson added that the child did not meet state legal requirements for an emergency alert, like an Amber Alert to be issued and provided this statement:
“The Dallas Police Department takes all missing persons investigations with the utmost seriousness and importance. Our dedicated investigators work tirelessly to locate missing individuals, maintaining regular communication with the family members throughout the process. We understand the emotional toll these situations bring and remain committed to doing everything possible to bring these cases to a resolution.”