Close call: West Point grandmother’s call to police saves grandchild
WEST POINT, Miss. (WCBI) – Since the Human Trafficking Hotline was created, it has identified 914 cases in Mississippi and over 2,000 victims.
A grandmother from West Point may have kept her granddaughter from becoming one of those statistics when she stepped in and spoke up.
A man was accused of kidnapping a girl in Arkansas and then coercing her to contact another female minor in Mississippi hoping he could snatch her up as easily as the first.
But things didn’t go as planned.
57-year-old Kenneth Barnes faces kidnapping, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor charges from the West Point Police Department and possibly sex trafficking charges from the F.B.I.
West Point Police Chief Avery Cook said he might have gotten away with it if the attempted victim’s grandmother hadn’t gotten involved.
“She noticed her granddaughter went outside. She noticed the guy. She didn’t know anything about this guy,” said Cook.
When the grandmother asked her granddaughter who the man and his young female friend were, the story didn’t make sense.
“At that moment, she called the police and we responded,” said Cook.
Veronica Harrison is an administrator at Community Counseling in Columbus.
She said perpetrators study their craft.
“They are listening. They are looking for the cues to say ‘Ah I got them. I’m lonely. Nobody hears me. Nobody’s listening to me.’ And often that’s when the predators go ‘I hear you. I’m listening.’ That’s normally what the individuals who get drawn in are looking for,” said Harrison. “Somebody who’s willing to listen to them and meet them where they are. Someone who tells them the things they’re looking to hear.”
Cook said predators take any opportunity to prey on a victim.
Don’t make it easy for them.
“It’s very important that you know what your child is doing on the internet. It’ll be best to go behind them and check and see because if you don’t, it only takes a couple of minutes, hours, or a day for this to happen. And if they get in contact with somebody that they think they know that they been talking to, the next thing you know, it’ll be an incident like we had here. That guy will be driving here to pick up your grandkids, your daughter, son, whatever, to take them across state lines,” said Cook.
Harrison said being an active parent or caretaker can be the difference that saves a child from human trafficking.
“We need to be in tune with the ones we love. Even if we’re a pain. Being a pain can save your kid’s life,” said Cook.
Cook said the F.B.I. is now involved and is expected to file federal charges as well.
