Jan. 4—A man and woman are accused of bringing a 14- and 15-year-old girl from California to Albuquerque to be sold for sex.
Roderick Norseweather, 25, and Tajahnae Johnson, 21, are charged with two counts of human trafficking a victim under 16.
Norseweather and Johnson were booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center overnight Friday.
Prosecutors filed a motion to keep the pair behind bars until trial, calling the allegations “appalling.”
Court records show Norseweather is currently on probation for a burglary conviction out of California. Johnson had a warrant for her arrest from August when she allegedly beat a woman for not wanting to “gangbang,” or run with a gang.
On Friday Albuquerque police found the 14-year-old, who was reported missing in California, scantily-clad and “soliciting sex” at Central and Rhode Island.
The girl told police she began “doing sex work” in September, first in San Bernadino and then Los Angeles, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. The girl said Norseweather picked her up as a customer and afterward told her “she worked for him now.”
Police said the girl told them Norseweather “demanded to be called ‘Daddy’ and that he was her pimp after that.” She said Norseweather introduced her to Johnson, who went by “Chocolate,” and a 15-year-old girl also being trafficked.
The girl told police Norseweather told her if she tried to leave or didn’t give him all her earnings he would kill her, according to the complaint. The girl said last week Norseweather put Johnson and the two teens on a train to Albuquerque, where they got a motel room.
Police said Norseweather told the girls to go to the area around the International District Library on Central, west of Pennsylvania, to “solicit sex work.” The girl told police she had sex — statutory rape by law — with 25 men in three days at the pair’s behest.
The girl told police they were sent to a home “owned by the Cubans” and performed sex acts as the men made and packaged drugs to sell, according to the complaint. She said, in a separate incident, Johnson and the other teen beat and robbed one of the men who tried to solicit sex from the 14-year-old.
Police said the girl told them Norseweather, who police identified as a previous sex trafficking suspect, was taking the train to Albuquerque to collect the money she made. Officers detained Norseweather, Johnson and the other teen at the motel the girl said they had been staying at.
Norseweather told police he was there for “a haircut” and “he had no idea” who the two teens were, according to the complaint. Johnson told police Norseweather was her friend and she had no idea he “was pimping out other women.”