Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Airman Faces Up to Facebook

Off He Goes.... into that Wild Grey Jail Cell.... off he goes, outta the sun.

"Air Force member accused of child enticement, sending explicit texts" by Jenna Nierstedt, Globe Correspondent | June 6, 2009

An Air Force member based in Georgia was arrested and charged with child enticement after luring a 14-year-old girl from Stow to a hotel in Concord yesterday morning, according to authorities.

Airman First Class Christopher Stevens, 19, of Missouri, had flown to Massachusetts on Thursday evening from Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone and Stow Police Chief Mark Trefry said. Stevens then met the girl outside her home in Stow and brought her to a Concord hotel, the officials said in a statement.

Stevens and the victim had met over the Internet on Facebook, according to the statement.

Stow police were alerted at 11 p.m. on Thursday when the girl's parents called to report their daughter missing, the statement said. An initial investigation showed that the girl had agreed to meet a male outside her home at approximately 10 that evening.

Investigating the girl's cellphone records and laptop computer, members of the district attorney's Cyber Protection Unit found that the victim and Stevens had repeated conversations of a sexual nature on Facebook and through cellphone text messages, the officials said.

Authorities said they learned about the meeting at the hotel through the electronic records.

Stevens was arrested by state and Stow police at the hotel about 11:50 a.m. yesterday.

Stevens is to be arraigned Monday in Concord District Court, Leone said.

Assigned to the 52d Combat Communications Squadron at Robins, Stevens, who has been at the base for less than a year, could face a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge, said John Birdsong, chief of media operations in the public affairs office at Robins.

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Remember, our military is the best we got.