This week there are two items on men who allegedly preyed on children.
One allegedly tried to pimp out a “17-year-old girl” who was actually an undercover police officer.
The other is accused of touching children playing at a park “inappropriately with a plastic flower.”
Daniel Negrete Herrera was the front desk attendant at a Stanton motel, where he contacted who he believed to be a teen-age girl on a social media site and offered her a room where she could perform sex acts with johns and then given him a $20 cut for each encounter, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office. The thing is, the 28-year-old Fullerton resident was not communicating with a minor but a member of the multi-agency Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force (OCHTTF), whose investigators showed up at the motel and arrested Herrera. His was later charged with one felony count of human trafficking of a minor, one felony count of attempted pimping of a minor, one felony count of attempted pimping, and one felony count of pandering by procuring. If convicted, Herrera faces up to 12 years in state prison, according to the OCDA, which notes he is scheduled to attend a pre-trial hearing Tuesday morning at North Justice Center in Fullerton. The OCHTTF is a partnership between Anaheim Police Department, California Highway Patrol, FBI, Huntington Beach Police Department, Irvine Police Department, OCDA, Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Santa Ana Police Department and community and non-profit partners.
Jacob Kells, a fugitive wanted for attempted murder in Monterey County, was arrested Tuesday morning after two Marines playing Pokemon Go in a Fullerton park noticed the transient allegedly acting strangely around children, according to police. Seth Ortega, 24, and Javier Soch, 27, were playing the virtual reality game in the downtown park around 10:30 a.m. when other gamers told them about a transient who walked up to a mother with her children and rubbed the chest of one kid with a plastic rose before the family fled to a nearby museum. The Marines later told police they suggested the mother contact police before then observing the “strangely dressed” man walk up to another mother with her two sons near the museum, where he patted the boys’ shoulders and reached down to their chest areas. The mother quickly guided her boys away from the stranger and toward a jungle gym, but the man followed them and tried to grab one boy’s foot then moved his hand up to touch the lad’s knee, the Marine witnesses said. At that point, the Marines and a third gamer ran over and detained the transient as he tried to leave and held him there until they could flag down an arriving Fullerton Police car. As the officers were arresting Kells on suspicion of misdemeanor child annoyance, they discovered he had an arrest warrant out for multiple charges including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, assaulting and resisting a peace officer, possession of a stolen vehicle, and felony evading causing great bodily injury. He was awaiting extradition to Monterey County last week.
